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THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 


BOOKS  IN  THE 

PAGE-BARBOUR  FOUNDATION 

UN^^ERSITY  OF  VIRGINIA 

THE  ARt'oF  biography 

By  William  Roscoe  Thayer 

PROBLEMS  f)V  LAW 

By  John  Henry  Wigmore 

THE  ORIGWl,  OF  THE  TRIPLE  ALLIANCE 
By  ^  C.  edolidge 

THE  CONFLICT  BETWEEN  INDIVIDUALISM  AND 
COLLECTIVISM  IN  A  DEMOCRACY 

By  Charles  W.  Eliot 

THE    EARLY    LITERARY    CAREER    OF    ROBERT 
BROWNING 

By  Thomas  R.  Lounsbury 


CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


THE 
ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 


BY 

WILLIAM   ROSCOE  THAYER 

AUTHOR   OF  "THE  LIFE  AND  TIMES  OF  CAVOUR " 

"  THE  LIFE   AND  LETTERS  OF   JOHN   HAY  " 

"THEODORE   ROOSEVELT:   AN   INTIMATE  BIOGRAPHY,"   ETC. 


'      J     ■> 


NEW  YOllK 

CHARLES  SCRIBN^R'S  SONS 

' 1920 " 


'  >  '    5  Toor^  ^,    '    ' 


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U-gr-'V' 


Copyright,  1920,  by 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


Published  September,  1920 


«^ 


f^ 


^0 
EDWIN    ANDERSON    ALDERMAN 

PRESIDENT  OF 
THE  UNIVERSITY   OF  VIRGINIA 


I  DEDICATE  THIS  LITTLE  BOOK 


Cambridge,  Massachusetts 
March  5,  1920 


I 


THE  BARBOUR-PAGE  LECTURE 
FOUNDATION 

The  University  of  Virginia  is  indebted 
for  the  estabhshment  of  the  Barbour-Page 
Foundation  to  the  wisdom  and  generosity  of 
Mrs.  Thomas  Nelson  Page,  of  Washington, 
D.  C.  In  1907,  Mrs.  Page  donated  to  the 
University  the  sum  of  $22,000,  the  annual 
income  of  w^hich  is  to  be  used  in  securing 
each  session  the  delivery  before  the  Univer- 
sity of  a  series  of  not  less  than  three  lectures 
by  some  distinguished  man  of  letters  or  of 
science.  The  conditions  of  the  Foundation 
require  that  the  Barbour-Page  lectures  for 
each  session  be  not  less  than  three  in  number; 
that  they  be  dehvered  by  a  specialist  in  some 
branch  of  literature,  science,  or  art;   that  the 

vii 


lecturer  present  in  the  series  of  lectures  some 
fresh  aspect  or  aspects  of  the  department  of 
thought  in  which  he  is  a  speciahst;  and  that 
the  entire  series  dehvered  each  session,  taken 
together,  shall  possess  such  unity  that  they 
may  be  pubhshed  by  the  Foundation  in  book 
form. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


"  I.     Biography  in  Antiquity  ....         i 

II.     From  MEDiiEVAL  to  Modern  Bi- 
ography          55 

III.     Biography    in  the    Nineteenth 

Century loi 

A  Short  List  of  Books  ....     149 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

I 

BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

^  I^HE  instinct  of  reproduction  is, 
-*■  next  to  that  of  self-preservation, 
the  most  imperative  of  all.  It  includes 
not  merely  the  desire  to  leave  flesh-and- 
blood  progeny  but  also,  after  human 
beings  have  reached  a  certain  intel- 
lectual level,  a  desire  to  {Perpetuate 
symbols  of  their  thoughts  and  experi- 
ence, and  evidences,  however  crude,  of 
their  passions.  In  the  slow  course  of 
ages  the  savage  comes  to  regard  him- 
self as  an  individual^  that  is,  an  ulti- 
mate unit,  in  his  tribe  or  clan.  Later 
he  discovers  that  he  is  a  person,  a 
being  through  whom  some  other  being, 
more  than  human,  mysteriously  speaks. 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

And  so,  as  man  acquires  a  richer  en- 
dowment of  expression,  faculties  more 
y  delicate,  talents  which  he  learns  to  con- 
trol and  to  use  with  greater  skill  —  in  a 
word,  self-expression — become  one  of 
his  dominant  characteristics. 

Many  of  his  records  are  unpremedi- 
tated. The  rude  figures  which  the 
Laplander  scratched  on  reindeer  bones 
had  no  further  significance  for  him  than 
the  gratification  of  a  fleeting  fancy. 
He  did  not  dream  that  they  would  be 
used  long  afterward  by  anthropologists 
to  measure  the  degree  of  his  savagery. 
The  rough  daubings  on  the  walls  of  an 
Etruscan  tomb  may  have  had  some 
religious  meaning  to  those  who  made 
them;  but  for  us  who  inspect  them 
now  they  are  merely  markers  in  the 
scale  of  expression  of  the  earliest 
Etruscans. 

As  men  become  more  civilized,  how- 
ever, they  labor  consciously  to  express 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

themselves.  They  feel  an  inner  urging 
to  register  remarkable  events.  A  long 
time  passes  before  the  private  indi- 
vidual counts  in  these  records.  As 
there  is  but  one  dominant  person  — 
the  monarch  —  in  and  above  their 
daily  lives,  and  the  collective  life  of 
their  community,  so  the  monarch  is 
the  subject  around  whom  the  chronicle 
is  woven.  "In  the  days  of  the  Great 
King,"  or  "In  the  ninth  year  of  the 
reign  of  Tiglath-Pileser"  —  so  run  the 
formulas  of  the  early  chroniclers.  But 
the  monarch  continues  to  be  for  a  long 
time  little  more  than  a  symbol  or  an 
abstraction  of  one  who  is  all-power- 
ful; neither  his  features  nor  his  traits 
are  individualized.  But  the  men  and 
women  over  whom  a  monarch  reigned, 
nature  individualized;  each  knew  joy 
and  suffering,  each  felt  the  glow  of 
hope,  or  the  bitterness  of  despair;  you 
cannot  lessen  the  weariness  and  pain 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

of  the  coffles  of  slaves  who  built  the 
Pyramids  or  rowed  the  galleys,  by 
generalizing.  Still  other  generations 
must  elapse  before  any  individual  lower 
than  the  monarch  is  held  worthy  of 
having  his  personal  record  or  expres- 
sion handed  down. 

Consider  for  a  moment  how  arro- 
gant it  seems  that  any  man  should 
have  his  likeness  preserved,  his  deeds, 
his  thoughts,  his  passions !  In  the 
face  of  Infinity  and  of  Eternity,  what 
is  he,  but  a  speck  ?  Is  any  particular 
bubble  on  the  ever-flowing  stream  of 
Nile  or  Amazon  —  an  iridescent  beam 
at  one  moment,  and  gone  the  next  — 
singled  out  for  lasting  remembrance  ? 
We  look  up  at  Sirius  to-night,  knowing 
that  the  dart  of  light  which  reveals  the 
great  star  to  us  began  its  journey  be- 
fore our  civilization  itself  began.  If 
we  could,  would  we  preserve  to-night's 
Sirian    ray   rather   than   to-morrow's  ? 

4 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

Such  questions  answer  themselves.  We 
are  men,  and  man  is  the  measure  for 
us.  With  difficulty  and  striving  and 
many  doubts  and  tears,  we  can  come 
to  an  understanding  of  our  duty  here. 
The  time  tests  of  astronomy  do  not 
concern  us,  except  as  they  teach  us 
that  we,  too,  are  parts  of  the  universe 
and  should  conduct  ourselves  with  all 
the  dignity  which  that  implies. 

I  do  not  know  which  biography  is 
the  first  to  escape  oblivion.  Doubtless 
the  earliest  books  of  China,  India, 
Egypt,  and  Western  Asia  contain  bi- 
ographical fragments  hardly  to  be  de- 
tached now  from  their  surrounding 
text.  For  my  purposes,  however,  I 
will  take  the  story  of  Joseph  in  the 
book  of  Genesis,  as  a  starter.  Al- 
though I  suspect  that  parts  of  it  may 
be  legendary  and  not  biographical,  it 
contains  on  the  whole  an  orderly,  con- 
secutive, and,  to  a  certain  extent,  indi- 

5 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

vidualized  life.  It  has,  also,  the  typical 
quality  peculiar  to  primitive  works. 
An  unusual  play  of  emotion  runs 
through  it,  and  there  is  a  plot  with 
several  dramatic  crises  which  a  mod- 
ern playw^right  might  envy. 

Joseph,  the  young  son  of  the  He- 
brew Patriarch  Jacob,  was  hated  by 
his  brothers.  They  were  jealous  of 
him  because  their  father  loved  him 
best  of  all,  and  the  boy  had  an  annoy- 
ing way  of  dreaming  dreams  in  which 
they  bowed  down  before  him.  While 
tending  their  flocks  they  conspired  to- 
gether to  kill  him,  but  one  of  them, 
Reuben,  advised  against  downright 
murder  lest  they  should  have  his  blood 
upon  their  hands.  So  they  put  him 
into  a  dry  pit,  having  first  stripped 
him  of  a  coat  of  many  colors  which  his 
father  had  given  him,  and  Reuben 
hoped  to  steal  back  and  rescue  the 
boy  after  the  other  brothers  had  de- 

6 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

parted.  But  a  caravan  of  Ishmaelites 
came  by  on  their  way  to  Egypt  with 
spicery  and  balm  and  myrrh,  and 
Judah,  another  brother,  with  a  true 
racial  instinct  for  the  commercial  value, 
even  of  brothers,  argued  that,  as  it 
would  profit  them  nothing  to  slay  little 
Joseph,  they  should  sell  him  to  the 
Ishmaelites.  This  they  did,  and  re- 
ceived for  him  twenty  pieces  of  silver, 
about  twelve  dollars  in  American  cash. 
They  killed  a  goat,  smeared  with  its 
blood  the  coat  of  many  colors,  and  re- 
turned to  Jacob,  letting  him  suppose 
that  his  darling  Joseph  had  been  de- 
voured by  wild  beasts. 

The  Ishmaelites  went  on  into  Egypt 
with  the  lad,  and  there  Potiphar,  Cap- 
tain of  the  Guard  to  Pharaoh,  bought 
him.  Joseph  was  both  willing,  indus- 
trious, and  far-sighted,  and  the  Lord 
made  all  that  he  did  to  prosper.  Poti- 
phar, appreciating  his  value,  promoted 

7 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

him  from  post  to  post,  until  he  rose 
to  be  the  chief  person,  except  his  mas- 
ter, in  the  house. 

Prosperity,  however,  though  coveted 
by  everybody,  makes  a  dull  back- 
ground to  a  story,  and  so  the  ancient 
Hebrew  or  Egyptian  biographer  brings 
in  at  this  point  an  almost  tragic  inter- 
ruption. Potiphar's  wife  fell  violently 
in  love  with  the  young  and  handsome 
Joseph,  and  attempted  to  seduce  him, 
but  he  broke  away  from  her  and  then 
she,  in  fury  at  being  scorned,  ac- 
cused him  to  her  husband.  Thereupon 
Joseph  was  thrown  into  prison  and 
had  only  the  blackest  future  to  look 
forward  to.  Some  of  his  fellow  pris- 
oners had  ominous  dreams,  which  he 
interpreted,  and,  as  his  interpretations 
were  verified,  Joseph's  reputation  as  a 
diviner  spread  beyond  his  prison  walls. 

After  a  while  Pharaoh 'himself  took 
to  dreaming.     He  saw  seven  fat-flesh 

8 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

kine  which  seven  thin  and  lean  kine 
swallowed  up.  He  dreamed  also  that 
seven  ears  of  corn  came  up  in  one 
stalk,  full  and  good;  and  that  seven 
other  ears  thin  and  withered  and 
blasted  with  the  east  wind  sprang  up 
after  them.  In  anxiety  Pharaoh  sent 
for  his  magicians,  but  none  of  them 
could  interpret  his  dreams.  Finally, 
having  heard  of  Joseph,  he  ordered  him 
to  be  brought  from  his  dungeon,  and 
Joseph  interpreted  the  dreams  as  por- 
tending that  after  seven  years  of  abun- 
dant harvests  there  would  follow  seven 
years  of  dearth. 

Pharaoh  rewarded  him  by  making 
him  Governor  of  Egypt,  second  to 
none  except  himself,  and  during  the 
seven  years  of  plenty  Joseph,  like  an 
ancient  Hoover,  stored  up,  collected, 
and  distributed  grain  and  foodstuffs. 
Now,  by  a  stroke  of  consummate  art, 
if   this    be  a  story  and   not  an  act- 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

ual  biography,  the  connection  between 
Joseph's  youth  and  the  period  of  his 
power  and  splendor  in  Egypt  is  made. 
The  years  of  dearth  blasted  the  land 
of  Canaan,  and,  when  the  pinch  of 
hunger  came,  Jacob  sent  his  sons  down 
into  Egypt  to  buy  corn.  There  they 
dealt  with  Joseph,  whom  they  did  not 
recognize,  but  he  recognized  them  and 
inquired  for  his  father  and  the  family, 
and  when  he  heard  that  his  mother 
had  a  younger  son,  Benjamin,  Joseph 
desired  to  see  him.  His  brothers  talked 
among  themselves  in  Hebrew  and  did 
not  suppose  that  Joseph,  with  whom 
they  spoke  in  Egyptian,  understood 
them.  But  he  sent  them  home  with 
their  sacks  filled  with  corn,  and  with 
the  money  they  had  brought  to  pay 
for  it  in  the  mouth  of  each  sack.  He 
required  them  to  leave  Simeon,  one 
of  their  brothers,  and  to  return  with 
Benjamin. 

10 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

When  they  told  their  father  Jacob  of 
this  demand  he  grieved  sorely,  for  he 
had  never  ceased  to  lament  the  loss  of 
Joseph,  the  youngest  in  the  earlier 
time,  and  he  feared  now  to  lose  Ben- 
jamin. Nevertheless,  he  consented  at 
last  rather  than  see  all  his  people  perish 
from  hunger.  So  the  brothers  came 
again  into  Egypt  with  Benjamin,  and 
when  Joseph  saw  his  own  brother,  the 
little  Benjamin,  he  was  so  much  moved 
that  he  went  into  another  room  and 
wept.  After  various  contrivings,  by 
which  Joseph  aimed  at  prolonging  the 
anxiety  of  his  brothers,  for  they  were 
stricken  with  remorse  and  attributed 
the  evils  which  had  come  to  them  as 
punishment  for  their  sin  against  Joseph 
in  selling  him  to  the  Ishmaelites,  he 
made  himself  known  to  them,  and  they 
fell  down  and  bowed  their  heads  be- 
fore him,  thus  fulfilling  the  early  dream 
which  had  made  them  hate  him. 

II 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

The  brothers  were  much  amazed  to 
find  Joseph  the  chief  person  in  Egypt, 
and  perhaps  they  wondered  whether 
he  would  not  punish  them  for  their 
wickedness  long  ago.  But  his  affec- 
tion prevailed.  He  kissed  them  and 
wept  upon  their  necks,  and  they  talked 
together.  Pharaoh  rejoiced  when  he 
heard  of  their  coming,  and  he  approved 
of  Joseph's  plan  of  sending  them  back 
to  Canaan  to  fetch  Jacob  and  all  of 
Jacob's  family  into  Egypt.  This  they 
did.  The  Patriarch  came  and  was 
given  lands  and  cattle,  and,  with  his 
children  and  grandchildren  around  him, 
he  prospered  to  the  day  of  his  death. 
Joseph  survived  him  many  years,  never 
losing  the  good-will  of  the  Pharaohs 
whom  he  served. 

If  the  story  was  written  to  illustrate 
a  moral,  the  moral  is  plain.  Except 
for  the  long  intervals  of  time  which 
pass  when  nothing  happens,  it  would 

V  I 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

make  an  excellent  drama,  to  which  the 
two  or  three  side  episodes  lend  variety. 
Nothing  could  be  more  natural  than 
the  way  in  which  results  flow  from 
the  precedent  causes.  The  uniformity 
with  which  Joseph  always  acts  in  char- 
acter —  is  always  generous  and  affec- 
tionate, self-controlled  and  virtuous  — 
inclines  me  to  believe  that  he  was  a 
real  person,  the  story  of  whose  life 
was  handed  down  because  it  made  a 
very  deep  impression  upon  both  the 
Israelites  and  the  Egyptians.  The 
usual  fable,  or  apologue,  lacks  the  very 
precise  individualized  traits  which  are 
salient  here. 

In  other  parts  of  the  Old  Testament 
we  come  upon  evident  biographical 
fragments.  The  story  of  David,  for 
example,  is  very  vivid  and  personal,  and 
it  abounds  in  those  supreme  touches 
which  the  old  Hebrew  genius  always 
displayed.     Nevertheless,  David's  Hfe, 

13 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

like  that  of  Joshua,  seems  to  be  history 
rather  than  biography. 

When  we  come  to  the  earliest  of  the 
Greek  writers  who  may,  on  several  ac- 
counts, be  considered  biographers,  we 
are  met  by  a  similar  intermixing  of  his- 
tory and  biography.  Xenophon,  who 
seems  to  me  one  of  the  Greeks  of  the 
great  period  who  had  a  strange,  man-of- 
the-world  quality  for  an  Athenian  of 
his  time,  wrote  two  books  which  have 
been  classed  ever  since  as  biographies, 
although,  when  you  examine  them 
closely,  you  see  that  other  characteris- 
tics preponderate.  Xenophon's  '*Cyro- 
paedia"  purports  to  describe  the  boy- 
hood and  training  of  the  great  king  Cy- 
rus; but  much  of  this  period  is  known 
only  through  hearsay  and  legend,  and 
then,  when  Xenophon  goes  on  to  tell 
about  the  campaigns  and  administra- 
tion of  Cyrus,  he  obviously  becomes 
more  historical  than  biographical.     In- 

14 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

deed,  I  might  say  philosophical,  be- 
cause he  often  inserts  an  anecdote  or  a 
reflection  which  may  or  may  not  belong 
to  Cyrus  but  expresses  the  author's  own 
view. 

Likewise,  in  his  "Memorabilia  of  the 
Life  of  Socrates''  he  follows  no  logical 
biographical  order,  but  narrates  in  a 
discursive  and  entertaining  style  his 
recollections  of  Socrates  and  the  stories 
he  has  heard.  Xenophon  was  a  sharp- 
eyed,  clear-headed,  practical  man,  and, 
like  most  practical  men,  he  did  not  dis- 
cern the  deep  and  fine  and  exalting 
things  of  the  spirit.  Years  ago  I  re- 
member a  practical  man  who  was  the 
neighbor  of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  at 
Concord.  When  I  asked  him  about 
Emerson  he  repHed:  "He  was  an  hon- 
est man  and  a  good  neighbor.  He  al- 
ways kept  his  half  of  the  fence  in  re- 
pair." That  was  all  that  he  saw,  and 
his  only  means  of  judging  Emerson.    So 

IS 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

Xenophon,  in  spite  of  having  a  pierc- 
ing intellect  and  various  real  talents, 
never  fathomed  the  Socratic  deeps.  It 
took  Plato  for  that  —  if,  in  fact,  some 
of  the  deeps  which  Plato  attributed  to 
Socrates  were  not  his  own.  Perhaps  I 
have  said  enough  to  indicate  why 
Xenophon's  "Cyropaedia"  and  "Mem- 
orabilia,'' interesting  though  they  be, 
and  important,  are  not  examples  of  true 
biography. 

What,  you  ask,  is  the  difference  be- 
tween history  and  biography  ?  What 
should  a  biography  tell  ?  First,  it  should 
'reveal  to  us  the  individual,  man  or 
^-woman,  that  indivisible  unit  which 
has  no  exact  counterpart  in  the  world. 
But  this  alone  is  not  enough — the  indi- 
vidual may  be  known  to  us  chiefly  as  a 
soldier,  or  a  poet,  or  a  statesman,  or  a 
merchant;  so  we  must  have  unfolded 
to  us  the  inevitable  reactions  between 
the  individual  and  his  profession. 

Next,  if  not  first,  we  shall  expect  to 

i6 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

learn  how  his  environment  in  time  and 
in  place  affects  him.  These  are  very 
subtle  processes,  although  the  class  of 
men  of  science  that  regard  all  life,  hu- 
man and  animal,  as  a  manifestation  of 
materiahsm  "explain'*  us  all  as  the 
mere  products  of  our  environment. 
This  I  do  not  believe. 

Judged  by  whatever  standard,  the 
first  real  master  of  biography  was  Plu- 
tarch, a  Greek  who  flourished  in  the 
latter  half  of  the  first  century  of  the 
Christian  era.  His  "Lives"  of  the 
celebrated  Greeks  and  Romans  of  an- 
tiquity are  a  splendid  monument  to  his 
instinct  for  penetrating  to  the  heart  of 
individuals.  Not  only  events  interest 
him,  but  also  the  way  in  which  states- 
men, or  soldiers  shape  events.  In  his 
Parallels  he  uses  the  comparative 
method,  and  tries  to  discover  wherein 
Solon  differed  from  Numa  or  Pompey 
from  Marcus  Brutus.  ' 

Plutarch  has  so  large  and  hospitable 

I? 


THE  ART   OF  BIOGRAPHY 

a  mind  that  he  brings  with  him  an  en- 
tire civih'zation.  His  random  allusions, 
his  quotations  from  ancient  poets  and 
prose-writers,  his  use  of  popular  say- 
ings current  in  his  time,  his  familiar- 
ity with  traditions,  and  with  the  gossip 
about  great  men,  which  often  exceeds 
in  trustworthiness  the  formal  written 
statement,  cannot  be  matched  by  any 
modern  biographer.  For  the  modern 
necessarily  embraces  only  a  fragment 
of  his  civilization;  Plutarch,  on  the 
contrary,  saw  the  record  of  Greece  as 
closed  and  complete,  and  the  record  of 
Rome  also  —  of  Republican  and  char- 
acteristic Rome  —  as  already  made  up. 
In  this  respect  no  modern  can  hope 
to  compete  with  Plutarch.  You  may 
write  a  life  of  Bismarck,  who  was  indis- 
putably a  world  figure,  but  you  cannot 
give  to  him  the  peculiar  quality  which 
belonged  to  Pericles  or  to  Caesar,  a 
quality  which  emanates  from  Plutarch's 

i8 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

sketches  of  those  great  men  Hke  fra- 
grance from  a  flower.  As  time  goes  on 
I  suspect  that  posterity  will  see  Bis- 
marck loom  up  as  Charlemagne  does,  or 
as  Frederick  Barbarossa,  a  huge  fig- 
ure amid  surroundings  which  cannot 
be  considered  civilized  in  spirit.  But 
when  we  read  in  Plutarch  of  Epami- 
nondas  or  Timoleon,  we  feel  that  in 
spite  of  the  lawlessness  or  quarrels 
amid  which  they  lived,  there  was  noth- 
ing barbaric  about  them. 

It  was  Plutarch's  good  fortune,  of 
course,  to  inherit,  as  it  were 

"The  glory  that  was  Greece," 

and  to  be  encircled  by 

"The  grandeur  that  was  Rome." 

But  it  is  to  his  everlasting  personal 
credit  that  by  his  knowledge  and  quick 
sympathy,  coupled  with  genius,  he  em- 
bodied so  much  of  the  classical  civiliza- 
tion in  his  works. 

19 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

No  wonder  that  the  following  story 
of  Theodorus  Gaza,  the  great  scholar 
at  the  Revival  of  Learning,  has  been 
often  quoted:  "'Tis  said  that,  having 
this  extravagant  question  put  to  him 
by  a  friend,  that  if  learning  must  suffer 
a  general  shipwreck,  and  he  had  only 
his  choice  left  him  of  preserving  one 
author,  who  should  be  the  man  he 
would  preserve,  he  answered,  Plutarch; 
and  probably  might  give  this  reason, 
that  in  saving  him  he  should  secure  the 
best  collection  of  them  all." 

Being  a  moralist  and  immensely 
curious,  as  Job  was,  to  understand  why 
the  Gods,  who  planted  moral  laws  in  the 
hearts  of  men,  allowed  the  wicked  to 
flourish  and  the  virtuous  to  fail,  he 
sometimes  uses  the  subjects  of  his 
"Lives"  as  examples  of  the  way  in 
which  moral  laws  disclosed  themselves 
through  mortal  careers.  Our  age  re- 
sents being  "preached  to,"  as  it  calls 

20 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

moralizing  of  this  sort.  But  fashion 
changes;  a  century  ago  our  ancestors 
not  only  submitted  to^jDUt  relished 
moral  reflections.  Southey's  "Life  of 
Nelson"  abounds  in  them,  and  it  would 
be  entertaining  to  inquire  why  South- 
ey's Anglican  moralizing  seems  almost 
obsolete,  like  that  of  the  Sunday-school 
books  of  my  youth,  while  Plutarch's  is 
fresh  and  pertinent. 

What  Plutarch  added  to  the  Art  of 
Biography  was,  therefore,  most  im- 
portant. He  reached  the  point  of  de- 
fining each  individual  very  clearly. 
He  had  a  most  catholic  interest  in  many 
types  of  persons,  and  in  the  case  of 
public  men  he  showed  how  far  their 
individual  qualities  affected  their  pub- 
lic actions.  As  you  first  read  the  long 
series  of  his  "Lives'*  you  have  an  im- 
pression not  unlike  that  which  comes 
to  you  when  you  first  walk  through  the 
Hall  of  Busts  at  the  Naples  Museum; 

21 


\ 


H 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

but  when  you  stop  to  examine  and  to 
compare,  you  discover  that  each  differs 
from  the  others,  that  each  face  has  its 
own  features. 

Among  so  many  and  divers  speci- 
mens I  find  it  hard  to  choose  special 
models;  "Read  until  you  are  satisfied," 
would  be  the  best  advice;  but  if  you 
wish  to  see  Plutarch's  methods  and 
scope  fairly  illustrated,  read,  say,  the 
"Alcibiades"  and  the  '*JuHus  Caesar/' 
What  modern  biographer  could  add 
much  that  is  essential  to  our  knowledge 
from  Plutarch  of  the  fundamental 
character  of  either  of  these  men  ?  In 
one  respect  the  modern  would  make 
more  orderly  biographies.  Plutarch 
writes  by  topics  and  not  by  chronology, 
so  that  we  are  not  always  sure  where 
this  or  that  episode  belongs  in  time; 
but  in  spite  of  this  lack  we  feel  on  fin- 
ishing one  of  Plutarch's  sketches  that 
he  has  included  all  of  the  most  neces- 

22 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

sary  facts  about  his  subject.  And  our 
desire  for  chronology  and  sequence  is 
really  very  modern.  Sir  Izaak  Walton 
did  not  have  it,  nor  did  most  of  the 
writers  of  lives  in  the  sixteenth,  seven- 
teenth, and  eighteenth  centuries.  We 
feel  this  desire,  I  think,  because  of  the 
idea  with  us  that  in  individuals,  as  in 
tribes  and  races,  there  is  a  constant 
evolution. 

So  we  are  most  curious  to  know  how 
the  older  man  grew  out  of  the  younger, 
how  the  youthful  Virginia  hunter  and 
surveyor,  George  Washington,  became 
the  founder  of  the  American  Republic, 
the  most  sane  and  perfectly  poised  of 
all  statesmen.  Events  alone  did  not 
make  him,  but  he  had  something  in 
him  to  which  events  attached  them- 
selves, as  iron  filings  to  a  magnet;  and 
so  of  our  still  more  unusual  American, 
Abraham  Lincoln,  who,  raised  among 
wild  and  sordid  backwoods  conditions, 

23 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

rose  to  wield  power  beyond  that  of 
Czars,  without  ever  harboring  a  selfish, 
despotic  thought.  These  amazing  con- 
trasts —  call  them  paradoxes  if  you 
will  —  are  what  most  absorb  our  at- 
tention. The  contrast  need  not  be  one 
of  event  or  position  alone,  but  it  may 
inhere  in  the  character  of  the  indi- 
vidual. We  seek  to  explain  the  lapse 
into  treason  which  no  remorse  could 
expiate,  of  Benedict  Arnold,  after  nearly 
forty  years  of  an  apparently  honor- 
able life.  There  is  an  old  Latin  proverb, 
^^ Nemo  turpissimus  repente^*  —  nobody 
turns  absolutely  bad  all  of  a  sudden. 
We  wish  to  trace  the  steps  by  which 
the  delinquence  from  virtue  to  guilt 
was  reached.  These  are  usually  hidden 
and  hard  to  uncover;  for  motive  lies 
behind  human  acts,  and  motives  are 
often  very  subtle.  I  was  talking  with 
President  Roosevelt  about  some  points 
in  his  career.     He  said  nothing  for  two 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

or  three  minutes,  and  then,  as  if  musing 
to  himself,  he  said:  **How  strange  mo- 
tives are !  When  you  did  a  certain 
thing,  you  thought  that  a  single,  clear 
reason  determined  you,  but  on  looking 
back  you  see  instead  half  a  dozen 
mixed  motives,  which  you  did  not  sus- 
pect at  the  time." 

The  Mystery  of  the  Will  interests  us 
most,  as  soon  as  we  perceive  that  the 
Will  guides  conduct  and  action.  Re- 
cent psychologists  tell  us  that  nobody 
is  made  all  of  one  piece  —  all  good  or 
all  bad;  but  that  the  state  of  conscious- 
ness in  which  each  of  us  lives  is  based 
on  subconsciousness,  a  compound  of 
physical  instincts  and  desires,  of  in- 
tuitions and  inherited  tendencies.  All 
these  perpetually  try  to  stream  up  into 
consciousness  and  control  it.  When 
the  animal  in  us,  for  instance,  breaks 
through,  we  revert  to  cruelty,  or  to 
cunning,  or  to  lust;    and  the  object  of 

25 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

every  civilization  worthy  of  the  name, 
is  to  strengthen  the  barrier  so  that  these 
primal  lower  instincts  shall  be  kept 
down.  "Each  of  us,"  said  a  well- 
known  psychologist  to  me,  "is  like  an 
iceberg,  two-thirds  of  which  lies  under 
water.  We  have  mistakenly  supposed 
that  the  third  above  the  surface  —  our 
consciousness  —  which  we  see,  was  all.'* 
This  psychological  aspect  of  person- 
ality greatly  increases,  of  course,  our 
difficulty  in  following  the  manifesta- 
tions of  the  will.  But  this  aspect, 
being  quite  modern,  never  appeared  to 
Plutarch,  or  to  the  Ancients:  They 
looked  on  men  and  their  deeds  as  un- 
complex,  and  I,  at  least,  find  a  certain 
calming  simplicity  both  in  their  bi- 
ographies and  histories,  and  in  their 
epics  and  tragedies.  Thanks  to  the 
divine  faculty  of  the  Imagination, 
Homer  and  Sophocles  penetrated  to 
the  bottom  of  the  human  heart,  so  that, 

26 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

although  they  had  no  knowledge  of 
double  and  triple  personality  or  of  the 
Freudian  Wish,  or  of  inhibitions  and 
hysteria,  they  were  able  to  create  fig- 
ures which  have  never  lost  their  hold 
on  posterity.  And  yet  the  simplicity 
to  which  I  allude  belongs  to  them  all, 
and  it  may  be  owing  to  their  direct  and 
naive  attitude  toward  actual  persons. 
In  reading  their  works  we  are  spared  the 
feeling  that  the  author  is  leading  us 
through  the  solution  of  a  series  of  prob- 
lems. The  shadow  of  the  problem 
darkens  almost  every  intellectual  prod- 
uct of  the  last  half-century.  But  the 
Ancient,  although  he  felt  the  burden 
of  the  mystery  not  less  than  the  Mod- 
ern feels  it,  kept  a  certain  spontaneity, 
a  freshness  of  outlook,  and  a  sense  of 
undulled  wonder  toward  life. 
:  We,  on  the  other  hand,  are  sophisti- 
cated; our  deepest  emotions,  our  strong- 
est passions,  have  all  been  dissected  and 

27 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

classified,  and  described  in  books,  to  be 
pawed  over  and  studied  as  problems. 

For  Plutarch,  however,  all  was  differ- 
ent. He  was,  I  suppose,  the  most 
learned  in  philosophy,  as  well  as  in  the 
immediate  knowledge  of  history,  of  any 
biographer  ancient  or  modern,  but  this 
did  not  rob  him  of  spontaneity  or  his 
other  ancient  inheritance.  He  lacked, 
necessarily,  our  modern  view  of  per- 
sonality, and  so  he  was  not  subtle, 
and  he  overlooked  matters  which  seem 
to  us  mysterious  and  interesting.  We 
recognize  that  in  a  large  sense  he  carves 
each  of  his  subjects  out  of  a  single 
block  of  stone  —  granite  or  marble  or 
basalt,  as  the  case  may  be  —  and  yet 
his  skill  in  portraying,  and  his  human 
imagination  produce  finished  products 
consistent,  generally  logical,  and  always 
lifelike.  To  understand  his  power  to 
differentiate  between  mythical  and 
half-mythical  personages  and  historical 

28 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY  I 

j 

characters,  read  his  Lives  of  Theseus       " 
and  of  Romulus,  and  compare  them       ! 
with  the  Lives  of  the  Emperors  Galba 
and  Otho,   or  of  Mark  Antony  and 
Tiberius  Gracchus.  i 

Dryden,  one  of  the  greatest  of  Eng-       ! 
lish  Hterary  critics,  edited  the  earHest       , 
important  version  in  EngHsh  of  Plu- 
tarch's   ''Lives."     What    he    said    of       i 
them  may  well  be  repeated  in  these      j 
later  times,  when  erudition  has  grown       ! 
to  immense  proportions  but  taste  is 
as  rare  as  it  always  was.     "In  read-      \ 
ing  Plutarch,"  he  says,  "the  following      ^ 
points  should  be  remembered.     He  is  a 
moralist  rather  than  a  historian.     His       \ 
interest   is   less   for   politics    and    the 
changes  of  empires,  and  much  more  for      ! 
personal  character  and  individual  ac- 
tion and  motives  to  action;   duty  per-       I 
formed  and  rewarded;  arrogance  chas- 
tised,  hasty  anger  corrected;  humanity, 
fair  dealing,  and  generosity  triumphing 

29  j 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

in  the  visible,  or  relying  on  the  invisi- 
ble world.  His  mind  in  his  biographic 
memoirs  is  continually  running  on  the 
Aristotelian  Ethics  and  the  high  Pla- 
tonic theories  which  formed  the  reli- 
gion of  the  educated  population  of  his 
time." 

One  other  biographical  gem  comes 
to  us  from  antiquity  —  the  brief  sketch 
of  Agricola,  by  Tacitus,  the  Roman  his- 
torian who  was  Plutarch's  contempo- 
rary. In  general  plan  and  in  topics 
chosen  by  the  biographer  to  be  em- 
phasized, it  resembles  a  Plutarchian 
sketch,  but  in  literary  treatment  it 
could  have  been  written  only  by  the 
tersest  of  prose  masters.  Tacitus  also 
indulges  in  pithy  moral  reflections. 

Perhaps  I  ought  to  mention  the  *'Life 
of  Apollonius  of  Tyana, "  by  Philostra- 
tus,  although  I  have  my  doubts.  It 
is  not  a  normally  planned  and  regu- 
larly   conducted    biography,     but     it 

30 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

has  remarkable  value  as  a  symptom. 
ApoIIonius  was  a  Pythagorean  ascetic, 
born  in  Cappadocia,  who  flourished  at 
the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era. 
From  his  boyhood  he  gave  himself  up 
to  a  pious  Hfe.  He  ate  no  meat;  he 
dressed  only  in  linen,  the  fur  and  wool 
of  animals  being  unclean;  he  dedicated 
himself  to  chastity,  and  renounced  the 
world  and  its  pleasures  in  order  to  dwell 
among  sages;  he  practised  the  Pythag- 
orean rule  of  silence  for  five  years. 
Not  only  did  wisdom,  capable  of  en- 
trancing the  masses,  flow  from  his  lips, 
but  he  performed  miracles  and  was 
recognized  as  a  great  magician.  Mod- 
esty seems  to  be  the  only  virtue  which 
he  did  not  possess  in  full  measure,  if  it 
be  true  that  he  boasted  of  being  able  to 
speak  all  languages  without  ever  hav- 
ing learned  them.  But  as  the  account 
which  we  have  of  him  probably  dates 
from  more   than   a   century  after  his 

31 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

death,  perhaps  the  boastful  quality 
may  have  been  added  by  tradition. 
In  Rome  he  raised  a  noble  lady  from 
the  dead.  He  travelled  not  only  to 
Nineveh  and  India  on  the  east  but  to 
Spain  on  the  west;  and  even  during  the 
period  when  he  observed  silence  he  had 
the  power,  by  a  gesture  or  the  change 
of  expression  in  his  face,  to  move  and 
control  multitudes.  The  reports  of  his 
travels  read  like  the  "Arabian  Nights." 
Many  of  his  contemporaries  revered 
him  whilst  living  as  a  deity,  and  for 
three  centuries  or  more  after  his  death 
people  flocked  to  his  shrines.  Some 
persons  called  him  an  impostor;  some 
a  magician;  some  a  god.  He  typifies 
the  Holy  Man  during  the  last  stage  of 
Paganism,  who  had  much  in  common 
with  the  Hindu  ascetics,  and  was  a 
precursor  of  the  early  Christian  ascetics 
in  the  East. 

In  reading  Philostratus's  life  of  him 

32 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

you  will  be  kept  on  the  alert  to  deter- 
mine what  parts  are  biographical  and 
what  parts  are  typical,  and  would  ap- 
ply to  any  Holy  Man  of  his  period. 
The  fact  that  the  cult  of  Apollonius  is 
believed  by  some  scholars  to  have  been 
promoted  by  the  adherents  of  vanish- 
ing Paganism  in  order  to  check  the 
just  rising  cult  of  Christ,  adds  to  the 
interest  of  the  book. 

I  do  not  think  that  we  need  to  pause 
and  examine  any  of  the  other  ancient 
biographers.  The  lives  they  wrote  did 
not  add  new  qualities  to  the  Art  of 
Biography.  The  lives  of  the  Caesars, 
by  Suetonius,  are,  of  course,  famous, 
and  they  hold  their  popularity  down 
to  the  present.  But  they  are  uncritical 
and  they  show  no  real  insight  into  char- 
acter, and  Classicists  to-day,  who  know 
the  field,  distrust  the  accuracy  of  some 
of  Suetonius's  details.  He  revelled  in 
personal    anecdotes,    many    of    which 

33 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

amuse  us,  but,  as  a  modern  critic  re- 
marks: *'He  panders  rather  too  much 
to  a  taste  for  scandal  and  gossip." 
Nor  did  they  reveal  any  genius  in  the 
writer  comparable  to  that  of  Plutarch 
or  of  Tacitus.  If  you  read  the  "  Life  of 
Nero"  by  Suetonius  and  compare  it 
with  the  "Life  of  Alcibiades"  by  Plu- 
tarch, you  cannot  fail  to  detect  the  shal- 
lowness of  the  Roman  writer  compared 
with  the  depth  of  the  Greek.  Sue- 
tonius tells  us  of  things  on  the  surface, 
the  gossip  and  innuendos  and  the  mad 
and  cruel  acts.  Plutarch,  on  the  other 
hand,  reveals  to  us  the  abiding  char- 
acter of  Alcibiades  —  the  very  logic  of 
him,  so  to  speak.  Yet  in  many  re- 
spects Alcibiades  equalled  Nero  in 
abnormality. 

The  constant  direction  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  Biography  has  been  from  the 
outward  to  the  inward.  At  first  the 
chief  effort  was  to  describe  the  external 

34 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

man,  the  rank  or  position  he  filled  and 
his  visible  acts.  Kings,  generals,  and 
other  conspicuous  persons  furnished 
the  usual  theme.  Gradually,  however, 
writers  came  to  see  that  a  king,  in  spite 
of  his  supreme  station,  might  be  very 
dull  and  uninteresting;  consequently, 
they  fixed  their  attention  on  persons 
who,  being  intrinsically  interesting,  did 
not  require  the  fortuitous  spotlight  of 
a  proud  race  or  a  high  station.  They 
came  to  perceive,  also,  that  the  motive 
behind  the  deed  was  the  really  essential 
thing  to  study  and,  if  possible,  to  ex- 
plain or  at  least  to  interpret. 

The  best  modern  Biography  seems 
to  me  to  differ  from  the  ancient  in  just 
these  points.  If  you  turn  to  literature 
you  find  that  a  similar  development 
has  taken  place.  At  first  the  char- 
acters in  fiction  were  only  slightly 
individualized.  The  type  prevailed. 
Stories  dealt  with  monarchs  and  heroes, 

35 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

and  then  with  nobles,  for  the  every- 
day pubHc  was  as  eager  to  know  how 
the  upper  classes  Hved  as  our  pubHc 
seems  to  be  inquisitive  about  the 
coming  and  going,  or  the  dress,  sports, 
amusements,  and  scandals  of  our  mul- 
timilHonaires.  The  average  Enghsh 
shopkeeper  probably  never  spoke  to 
a  duke,  but  in  the  pages  of  a  romance 
he  could  learn  how  dukes,  earls,  and 
barons  were  supposed  to  live,  and 
how  they  spoke,  and  even  what  they 
thought.  I  suspect  that  the  portraits 
of  most  of  them,  being  purely  imagi- 
nary and  drawn  by  authors  as  igno- 
rant as  their  readers,  were  hardly  life- 
like, but  they  served.  They  held  the 
field  for  a  long  time,  and  they  have  not 
been  wholly  discarded  even  now,  when 
novels  of  "high  life'^  are  greedily  de- 
voured every  year. 

Earlier,  various  passions  or  moods 
took  possession  of  the  writers  of  fiction, 

36 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

and  then  the  persons  they  depicted 
abounded  in  sensibility,  or  in  candor, 
and,  if  I  may  use  the  expression,  their 
tears  flowed  at  every  pore.  Occasion- 
ally a  huge  block  of  actual  life,  like 
Fielding's  ''Tom  Jones,"  startled  the 
world  into  the  conviction  that  truth 
surpasses  all  fictitious  imaginings. 

From  another  side,  also,  came  a 
strong  impulse  to  express  the  real, 
inner  man,  not  the  typical  man,  the 
creature  whom  convention  had  agreed 
upon.  All  judges  do  not  look  alike  or 
act  alike.  All  old  fathers  are  not  neces- 
sarily peppery  in  their  temper  and  ob- 
durate in  their  will.  Each,  being  an 
individual,  should  be  drawn  as  an  in- 
dividual. Lyric  poets  who  poured  out 
their  inmost  souls  in  verse,  and  ^auto- 
biographers  who  unveiled  their  most 
private  thoughts  in  confessions,  im- 
pressed upon  the  world  the  fact  that  a 
real  human  being  was  quite  unlike  the 

37 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

stiff  and  affected  and  really  lifeless 
contrivances  which  fashion  wished  to 
substitute.    I 

So  fiction  felt  the  replenishing  and 
invigorating  influence  of  these  mighty 
sources  of  true  passion,  and  the  writers 
of  Biography  were  moved,  whether  they 
would  or  not,  by  the  writers  of  fiction. 
It  would  be,  indeed,  a  paradox  if  a  bi- 
ographer, who  sets  out  to  describe  the 
life  of  an  actual  person,  should  make 
him  less  lifelike,  less  real,  than  the 
novelist  succeeds  in  making  the  phan- 
tom offspring  of  his  imagination. 

This  illustrates  how,  if  you  would 
understand  the  growth  of  the  Art  of 
Biography,  you  must  keep  constantly 
in  mind  the  parallel  growth  in  the  lit- 
erary arts,  especially  in  those  of  poetry 
and  fiction.  Nor  should  I  omit  paint- 
ing also,  for  those  who  have  access  to 
collections  which  exhibit  the  historic 
progress  of  that  art.     The  early  paint- 


38 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

ers  and  the  Primitives  had  Httle  skill 
in  portraiture.  They  used  conven- 
tional figures  for  Christ,  and  the  Ma- 
donna, and  others  of  the  holy  persons. 
The  bodies  they  drew  were  angular  and 
anatomically  impossible,  products  of  an 
age  before  anatomy  had  appeared  to 
suggest  that  the  human  form  may  em- 
body Beauty.  Then  the  painters  drew 
the  faces  of  their  saints  from  living 
models,  and  in  time  it  came  to  be  fash- 
ionable to  paint  a  group  of  portraits 
of  the  family  kneeling  in  adoration  of 
the  celestial  personages  to  whom  they 
dedicated  the  altarpiece.  Then  the  art 
of  portraiture  culminated. 

In  Biography,  also,  we  have  similar 
stages  —  Byzantine  figures  with  hardly 
a  recognizable  individual  feature,  wrists 
and  ankles  that  cannot  function,  and 
expression  that  does  not  express.  Then 
the  Primitives,  and  next  the  coming 
to  life  of  individuals,  until  we  reach 

39 


\ 


v 


t 

THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

the  few  consummate  biographies  which 
show  us  Hving  men,  each  unhke  the 
others,  with  passions,  instincts,  and 
desires,  with  motives,  too,  and  will, 
which  guides  and  governs  them  all. 
^  From  outward  to  inward  —  that  is 
the  direction  which  the  Art  of  Biog- 
raphy has  taken,  and  that  is  the  direc- 
tion which  every  true  biographer  should 
S  take.  Only  those  who  are  fooled  them- 
selves, or  love  to  fool  others,  imagine 
that  life  is  nothing  but  surfaces.  And 
yet,  as  we  survey  History,  we  come 
upon  entire  generations  or  epochs  in 
which  mankind  seems  to  be  content 
with  surfaces.  By  a  '"gentleman's 
agreement"  convention  is  accepted  as 
sufficient.  Traditions  may  keep  alive 
the  report  of  a  long-past  day  when  mor- 
als flourished  and  men  believed  ar- 
dently, and  tried  to  practise  their  belief; 
but  zeal  cooled,  the  very  capacity  to 
hold  a  strong  belief  failed,  and  hypoc- 

40 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

risy,  under  the  guise  of  convention,  or 
keeping  up  appearances,  found  a  way 
by  lip  service  to  satisfy  the  last  faint 
whispers  of  the  spirit. 

Finally,  a  crust  forms  over  Society, 
until  there  comes  a  poet  or  a  religious 
prophet  and  breaks  this  crust  and 
drops  his  sounding  plummet  deep, 
deep  into  the  very  heart  of  human 
nature,  and  life  wells  up  again.  If 
we  could  analyze  any  age  and  discover 
to  what  extent  it  lived  by  tradition  and 
habit,  and  to  what  extent  it  brought 
something  new  of  its  own,  we  should 
be  better  able  to  determine  the  value 
of  that  age  in  the  march  of  progress; 
the  same  would  be  true  in  the  case  of 
individuals.  We  should  know  then 
with  precision  whether  a  great  man 
was  original,  how  much  he  borrowed 
either  through  inheritance  or  through 
contact  with  his  fellows.  But  this 
close  measurement,  although  possible 

41 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

to  the  chemist  when  he  weighs  mole- 
cules and  atoms,  is  still  beyond  our 
scope  in  dealing  with  human  beings. 
Nevertheless,  the  biographer  must  do 
his  utmost  to  help  us  to  understand  in 
how  far  his  subject  stood  on  his  own 
feet  and  was  original,  and  in  how  far 
he  was  derived,  a  product  of  custom 
and  the  Past,  only  one  specimen  of 
ten  thousand  stereotyped  in  the  same 
mould. 

The  examples  I  have  given  of  Bi- 
ography in  antiquity  do  not  touch  these 
considerations  at  all.  Plutarch's  men 
are  what  they  are,  and  never  suggest 
that  he  puzzled  himself  over  analyzing 
where  they  got  their  substance  and 
qualities,  or  their  originality.  Life  to- 
day has  become  so  much  a  tangle  of 
problems  —  moral,  religious,  social,  eco- 
nomic, hygienic  —  that  we  are  fortu- 
nate indeed  if  we  keep  any  freshness 
of  youth,  any  bloom  of  wonder,  for  the 

42 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

new  adventures  which  meet  us  on  our 
journey  through  it.  We  have  learned 
so  much  about  the  mechanical  and  ma- 
terial forces  that,  like  children  with 
their  toys,  we  must  take  apart  our  ex- 
periences, even  our  emotions,  even  our 
love  and  grief  and  remorse,  and  inspect 
their  mechanism  and  assure  ourselves 
that  we  are  getting  a  normal  share  of 
each;  but  when  we  move  among  Plu- 
tarch's multitude  they  seem  as  natural, 
as  uncompHcated,  as  the  fields  in  sum- 
mer seem  to  the  boys  and  girls  who 
play  in  them,  and  have  not  been 
weighted  down  by  the  knowledge  which 
converts  flowers  into  botanical  speci- 
mens with  Latin  names. 

The  hope  of  the  Biographer  should 
be  to  emulate  Plutarch  in  making  his 
hero  natural,  and  at  the  same  time  to 
add  such  information,  not  technical, 
not  pedantic,  as  we  more  sophisticated 
inquirers  of  the  later  world  crave  to 

43 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

know.     The    modern    Biographer   will 
not  write  to  estabHsh  a  theory  or  to  . 
illustrate  a  creed,  but  he  will  give  the  | 
large   and   significant   human   facts   in 
such  a  way  that  the  reader  who  is  curi- 
ous  about  the  theory  or  the  creed  willj 
find  his  answer  in  them,  while  all  read^ 
ers  will  recognize  their  humanness. 

The  opinion  —  I  may  almost  call  it 
prejudice  —  prevails  that  contempo- 
rary history  cannot  be  impartial,  or 
fully  informed,  or  final.  I  heard  two 
of  our  historians  discuss  this  matter, 
and  ask  how  much  time  should  elapse 
before  the  true  history  of  a  significant 
episode  could  be  written.  One  urged 
that  at  least  fifty  years;  the  other,  who 
measured  by  larger  periods,  thought 
that  two  or  three  hundred  years  would 
be  required.  The  same  discussion 
would  apply  to  Biography,  although  the 
same  limits  would  probably  not  be  re- 
spected.    Most  personages  who  fill  a 

44 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

large  place  in  popular  estimation,  while 
they  Hve,  dwindle  very  rapidly  after 
their  death,  and  in  even  a  century 
would  be  forgotten.  Nevertheless,  the 
best  biography  that  could  be  written 
within  a  few  years  of  their  death  might 
be  useful  and  important.  Ought  we, 
therefore,  to  observe  rigidly  the  hun- 
dred-year limit  ^     I  do  not  think  so. 

The  idea  that  the  actual  history  or 
biography  cannot  be  written  until  all 
the  evidence  is  in  seems  to  me  mis- 
leading. What  we  get  after  a  hundred 
years  is  a  rationalized  account,  thanks 
to  which  we  can  pronounce  a  verdict, 
as  a  judge  does.  But  events  as  they 
happen  are  seldom  rational.  They 
lack  an  orderly  beginning,  middle,  and 
end,  the  unexpected  plunges  in,  de- 
stroys the  natural  sequence,  and  turns 
the  affair  off  in  another  direction. 
Which  of  us,  in  looking  back  over  his 
life,  can  say  that  all  his  acts  were  logical 

45 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

or  orderly?  You  form  a  partnership 
with  a  man  who  turns  out  to  be  an  em- 
bezzler; illness  or  accident  which  you 
could  not  foresee  cuts  your  life  in  two, 
or  any  other  stroke  of  good  or  evil  for- 
tune breaks  the  regular  course  of  your 
career.  You  yourself,  writing  your  au- 
tobiography, might  not  be  aware  of 
these  or  other  influences  in  your  devel- 
opment, but  you  would  realize  most 
poignantly,  perhaps,  how  it  affected 
you  at  the  time,  and  seemed  to  give  a 
different  direction  to  your  purposes. 

/  In  writing  history  or  biography  the 
first  aim  should  be  to  tell  the  story  as 
nearly  as  possible  as  the  actors  or  hero 

\  underwent  it.  If  you  are  dexterous 
you  can  supply  such  facts  as  have  sub- 
sequently come  out,  to  alter  the  view 
we  have  formed  from  our  knowledge  of 
its  immediate  unfolding. 

What,  for  example,  is  the  true  story 
of  the  Battle  of  Waterloo .?     Is  it  the 

46 


BIOGRAPHY  IN   ANTIQUITY 

cold,  dead  description  which  the  mih- 
tary  historian  can  write,  having  at  his 
command  all  the  verified  details  which 
have  been  collected  during  a  century  — 
an  affair  to  be  illustrated  by  diagrams 
and  statistics,  as  passionless  as  a  game 
of  chess? — for  in  such  an  analysis  the 
units  are  treated  as  being  as  unhuman 
as  chessmen  are.  No,  I  cannot  forget 
that  every  one  of  the  one  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand  men  at  Waterloo  was  a 
human  being,  with  a  human  capacity 
for  fear  or  for  courage,  some  of  them 
intoxicated  by  the  excitement  and  lust 
of  battle,  and  every  one  of  them  having 
in  his  heart  more  than  curiosity  as  to 
his  individual  fate. 

Fossil  history  regards  as  negligible 
what  went  on  in  Napoleon's  mind  and 
in  Wellington's  during  the  tremendous 
vicissitudes  of  that  day.  It  takes  no 
count  of  the  fact  that  throughout  the 
earlier  hours  of  the  battle  Napoleon 

47 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

issued  his  orders  on  the  assumption  that 
Grouchy  would  arrive  in  the  afternoon. 
Fossil  history  knows  that  Grouchy  was 
not  coming;  it  does  not  pay  much  at- 
tention to  the  desertion  of  the  Dutch 
and  other  regiments,  which  would  have 
disconcerted  a  General  less  unshakable 
than  Wellington.  No,  to  treat  the  acts 
and  passions  which  make  up  history  as 
dead  things  is  not  the  highest  aim  of 
the  historian.  It  substitutes  intellec- 
tual processes  —  analysis,  criticism  of 
evidence,  and  the  passing  of  judicial 
verdicts— for  life  at  white  heat.  A  true 
description  of  the  Battle  of  Waterloo 
would  make  the  reader,  unless  he  have 
a  heart  of  pumice-stone,  thrill  as  he 
sees  Ney  lead  the  Old  Guard  on 
its  magnificent  charge  from  the  little 
height  of  La  Belle  Alliance  down 
through  the  valley,  a  scant  half-mile, 
and  up  the  slope  of  Mount  St.  Jean, 
to  break  itself  against  the  iron  wall  of 

48 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

Wellington's  Redcoats  and  Grenadiers, 
in  frantic  valor,  as  surf  upon  a  reef. 
Every  one  of  these  French  Guards  rode 
impetuously,  gallantly,  to  the  attack, 
not  knowing  as  we  do  how  it  was  to 
turn  out,  but  conscious  of  the  Old 
Guard's  long  record  of  glory,  never 
dreaming  that  defeat  was  possible 
while  Ney  led  and  the  Emperor  looked 
on. 

A  little  later  in  the  afternoon,  when 
an  indistinct  blur  of  troops  was  dis- 
cerned in  the  east  beyond  St.  Lambert, 
how  describe  the  suspense  of  each 
Commander  until  he  knew  whose  troops 
they  were  ^  And  then,  how  tell  of 
Wellington's  relief  when  he  found  they 
were  Bliicher's,  or  Napoleon's  surprise 
when  he  learned  that  they  were  not 
Grouchy's.  You  can  never  describe  a 
battle,  or  any  other  historical  event 
unless  you  put  in  the  suspense,  the  pas- 
sion, the  half-knowledge,  or  complete 

49 


\ 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

ignorance,  which  determined  its  out- 
come. If  the  Hindu  host  had  known 
that  CHve  could  muster,  in  compari- 
son, only  a  handful  of  Englishmen  at 
Plassey,  they  might  not  have  fled  in 
rout.  Conversely,  if  the  British  had 
known  that  the  Turkish  force  at  Gal- 
lipoli  was  reduced  to  three  shells,  they 
would  have  made  a  final  charge  instead 
of  retreating  and  abandoning  the  Dar- 
danelles. 

I  conclude,  therefore,  that,  although 
later  history  may  serve  a  real  purpose 
in  correcting  errors  due  to  contem- 
porary ignorance  or  prejudice,  the  best 
history  or  biography  is  that  which 
comes  as  near  as  possible  to  reproducing 
the  event  or  the  person  as  in  life.  If 
you  wish  to  describe  an  eruption  of 
Vesuvius  —  to  cite  an  example  I  have 
used  elsewhere  —  you  will  not  be  satis- 
fied to  measure  the  blocks  of  lava, 
which  the  people  of  Naples  use  as  pav- 

50 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

ing-stones,  but  you  will  seek  for  the 
testimony  of  those  who  saw  the  erup- 
tion in  process.  To  the  imagination 
the  acts  of  men  seem  to  pour  forth  in 
perpetual  flow  from  a  volcano  whose 
crater  runs  down  into  the  Unknown, 
and,  as  you  can  never  counterfeit  mo- 
tion by  immobility,  or  molten  lava  by 
ice,  so  you  cannot  make  death  a  sub- 
stitute for  life.  Never  fear,  therefore, 
that  History  or  Biography  can  be  too 
Inelike;  your  difficulty  will  be  to  find 
means  through  the  art  of  literature  to 
produce  an  adequate  simulation  of  life- 
likeness.  Fossil  history,  fossil  biog- 
raphy cannot  satisfy  much  longer  living 
readers.  Fossil  history  knows  that 
Wellington  had  received  a  despatch 
from  Bliicher  saying  that  he  would  join 
forces  with  the  English  on  that  day. 

In  reading  biographies  of  men  and 
women  of  different  times  and  races  we 
must  be  on  our  guard  against  the  illu- 

51 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

sions  which  mere  dress  and  manners 
create.  The  first  morning,  when  you 
walk  through  Mushki,  in  Cairo,  the 
people  seem  all  strange  in  face  and  look 
and  dress,  but  their  strangeness  is  so 
uniform  that  you  fail  to  detect  indi- 
viduals among  them.  In  a  few  days, 
however,  you  come  to  know  them  as 
individuals,  to  distinguish  the  Arabs 
from  the  Persians  and  the  Caffirs  and 
the  Hindus;  and  among  these  again 
you  see  well-defined  varieties.  We  are 
so  much  the  victims  of  fashion  that  we 
attribute  to  its  observance  moral  quali- 
ties, which  have  little  or  nothing  to 
do  with  it.  A  soldier  who  launches 
bravely  on  a  perilous  cavalry  charge 
would  be  covered  with  mortification, 
and  would  probably  retreat  if  he  found 
himself  in  a  ballroom  without  his  collar. 
But  literature  and  biography  should 
teach  you  not  to  judge  by  clothes. 
Young  Abraham  Lincoln  would  have 

52 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  ANTIQUITY 

made  a  poor  enough  figure  on  Fifth 
Avenue  in  his  deerskin  pantaloons, 
and  it  is  safe  to  say  that  not  one  of  the 
cultured  and  fashionable  New  Yorkers 
who  might  have  met  him  would  have 
foreseen  that  he  was  to  be  the  greatest 
American  of  the  century. 

So  the  Biographer  should  make  it 
plain  from  the  start  that  he  introduces 
you  to  a  real  man  or  woman,  and  not 
to  a  lay  figure  or  manikin  wearing  gar- 
ments, stylish  or  other32^^.  We  will 
not  dispute  that  "Manners  maketh 
man,"  but  manners  of  this  sort  spring 
from  the  moral  nature  or  the  tempera- 
ment, and  not  merely  from  etiquette. 
Etiquette  permits  mean  conduct,  vul- 
garity, dissoluteness,  and  punishes  only 
one  crime,  the  crime  of  being  found 
out. 

I  ask  you  to  hold  these  general  con- 
siderations in  mind  at  every  point  in 
our  brief  study  in   Biography.     Con- 


"1 
ij 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

stantly  compare  the  evolution  of  this 
art  with  that  of  Painting  and  of  Fic- 
tion. And,  above  all,  do  not  be  mis- 
led by  any  false  or  specious  arguments 
into  believing  that  fossil  history  or  fos- 
sil biography  can  ever  serve  as  sub- 

/  stitutes  for  the  true.  Life  has  no  real 
representative  except  Life,  and  there- 
fore the  best  biography  and  the  best 

^-  history  are  the  most  lifelike. 

We  have  traced  the  steps  by  which 
biographers  in  antiquity  arrived  at 
lifelikeness.  More  than  a  thousand 
years  were  to  elapse  before  the  appear- 
ance of  the  first  tentative  forerunners 
of  modern  biography. 


54 


II 

FROM  MEDIEVAL  TO  MODERN 
BIOGRAPHY 

TO  imply  that  the  ten  or  twelve 
centuries  after  Plutarch  were  bar- 
ren of  biographical  material  would  be 
incorrect,  for  a  good  many  biographies 
were  written  during  that  period;  indeed, 
a  new  and  prolific  variety  sprang  up. 
I  refer  of  course  to  the  lives  or  acts  of 
the  saints.  With  the  spread  of  Chris- 
tianity, the  men  and  women  who  were 
missionaries  and  apostles  naturally  be- 
came conspicuous.  They  formed  the 
dramatis  -personce  of  what  we  may  re- 
gard as  the  Christian  counterpart  of  the 
classical  mythology,  with  its  heroes  and 
demigods.  They  not  only  led  holy 
lives,  but  they  possessed  superhuman 
faculties,  chief  among  which  was  the 

55 


THE   ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

power  to  perform  miracles,  and,  in  the 
earlier  times,  when  they  strove  to  con- 
vert Pagans  into  Christians,  they  often 
suffered  martyrdom.  The  world  they 
lived  in,  being  wofully  ignorant  of  the 
simplest  laws  of  nature,  found  it  easier 
to  believe  than  to  disbelieve  in  so-called 
miracles.  Only  by  a  miracle  could  the 
Saint  prove  his  Saintship.       \  • 

To  an  open-minded  modern  it  must 
seem  queer,  to  say  the  least,  that  it 
often  took  so  long  for  the  experts,  who 
ought  to  be  the  best  qualified,  to  dis- 
cover whether  a  person  was  a  saint  or 
not.  The  pious  antics  of  that  most 
engaging  Spanish  nun.  Saint  Theresa 
de  Sepeda,  for  instance,  were  regarded 
with  more  than  suspicion  by  orthodox 
Catholics  during  her^  lifetime,  but  they 
were  set  up  forty  years  after  she  died 
as  unquestionable  proofs  that  she  was 
a  saint.  More  astonishing  still  is  the 
case  of  Joan  of  Arc,  who  was  recently 

56 


MEDIEVAL  TO  MODERN 

canonized  after  she  had  been  dead  over 
four  hundred  and  eighty  years. 

**The  Lives  of  the  Saints"  which 
were  composed  and  preserved  during 
the  Middle  Age  and  later,  often  con- 
tained delightful  traditions  about  their 
subjects,  and  embodied  in  this  great  vol- 
ume of  biographical  ingredients  there 
are  probably  many  true  stories  of  the 
way  in  which  simple  and  devout  Chris- 
tians practised  their  religion  and,  if 
need  be,  died  for  it.  But  I  do  not  re- 
call that  the  writers  added  anything  to 
the  Art  of  Biography.  If  you  once  ad- 
mit that  a  person  has  the  power  to 
raise  the  dead,  or,  when  decapitated, 
to  walk  with  his  head  under  his  arm, 
or  to  perform  any  other  alleged  miracle, 
you  lose  touch  with  reality  so  com-  . 
pletely  that  History  and  Biography  | 
cease  to  have  meaning  for  you.  It  / 
will  not  do  to  argue,  as  many  Spiritists 
and  Occultists  argue  to-day,  that,  as 

57 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

there  are  many  things  in  life  which  we 
do  not  understand,  so  we  must  not 
assert  that  the  spooks  and  apparitions 
and  communications  with  the  dead, 
which  they  declare  real,  are  not  real.  I 
lose  interest  in  reading  about  the  mir- 
acle-workers, just  as  I  do  in  reading 
about  fairy  godmothers  and  the  magi- 
cal personages  of  the  medieval  legends. 
If  you  believe  literally  that  a  witch  can 
turn  a  pumpkin  into  a  coach,  and  rats 
into  coachmen,  what  cant  you  believe  ? 
There  is  no  farther  scope  for  surprise. 
The  world  becomes  topsyturvy  and 
lawless,  and  the  dwellers  in  it  are  in- 
ferior to  the  incurable  inmates  of  a 
lunatic  asylum.  Reason  too  has  its 
august  and  holy  rights,  and  those  who 
flippantly  turn  their  backs  upon  it  to 
pursue  specious  and  flimsy  phantoms 
are  not  fit  to  live  in  this  world  or  any 
other  which  a  rational  mind  can  con- 
ceive of. 

58 


MEDIEVAL  TO  MODERN 

One  real  biography  shines  out  upon 
us  from  the  Dark  Age  Hke  the  steady 
flame  of  a  candle  among  a  throng  of 
evanescent  will-o'-the-wisps.  This  is 
the  *'Life  of  the  Emperor  Charle- 
magne" (or  Charles  the  Great)  by  his 
secretary  and  private  chaplain,  Egin- 
hard  or  Einhard.  He  took  Suetonius 
as  his  model,  and  after  devoting  forty 
pages  to  the  wars  and  political  work  of 
the  masterful  King,  he  spends  the  last 
twenty  pages  en  the  King's  private  life 
and  personal  aff^airs.  This  part  is  really 
interesting.  Einhard,  by  merely  re- 
citing  rather  commonplace,  human 
facts,  succeeds  in  making  Charlemagne 
liye^  Although  Einhard  was  a  Prank- 
ish barbarian,  writing  in  Latin  which  he 
confesses  he  could  not  use  subtly,  he 
achieved  a  recognizable  portrait,  which 
even  so  slight  a  trifle  as  the  statement 
that  the  King  disliked  physicians  be- 
cause they  prescribed  boiled  meats,  and 

59 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

he  insisted  on  eating  his  roasted,  fills 
out.  Einhard  does  not  write  a  dehb- 
erate  eulogy,  but  he  tells  only  the  noble 
or  worthy  things  about  his  master, 
whom  he  so  evidently  reveres,  that  it 
would  be  sacrilege  for  him  to  set  down 
any  blemishes.  Thus  he  speaks  of 
Charlemagne's  great  affection  for  his 
daughters.  The  King  loved  them  so 
much  that  he  insisted  on  having  them 
always  near  him,  and  would  not  allow 
them  to  marry,  and  he  pretended  to  be 
unaware  that  they  led  immoral  lives, 
which  gave  rise  to  much  scandal. 

As  we  hold  Einhard's  little  Essay  in 
our  hand  and  reflect  that  it  contains 
much  of  the  vital  contemporary  knowl- 
edge of  Charlemagne  which  has  come 
down  to  posterity,  and  look  at  the  ten 
massive  volumes  of  Nicolay  and  Hay's 
"Abraham  Lincoln,"  we  understand 
the  immense  advantage  which  the  mod- 
ern hero  has  over  the  medieval  or  the 

60 


MEDIEVAL  TO  MODERN 

ancient  in  securing  a  written  monument 
of  his  career.  David  Masson  erected  a 
similar  monument  in  "The  Life  of  John 
Milton  and  the  History  of  His  Time." 
But  after  a  thousand  years  how  many 
persons,  do  you  think,  will  read  these 
encyclopedic  works  .^  Nicolay  and  Hay 
will  be  consulted  as  long  as  Lincoln  is 
remembered,  but  to  be  read  is  quite 
another  matter.  After  eleven  hundred 
years,  however,  we  read  Einhard's 
sketch  of  Charlemagne,  for  it  takes  but 
an  hour.  The  bullet  journeys  farther 
than  the  boulder. 

Charlemagne  stands  as  a  colossal 
monarch  at  the  beginning  of  the  Middle 
Age.  Louis  IX  of  France  stands  at  its 
close,  not  equal  to  Charlemagne  in 
significance,  but  still  a  very  important 
and  interesting  sovereign,  who  had  the 
good  fortune  of  having  his  life  told  in 
one  of  the  most  delightful  biographies, 
ancient  or  modern.     Jean,  Sire  de  Join- 

6i 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

ville,  wrote  it,  a  noble  who  was  among 
the  King's  intimates  in  war  and  peace. 
Out  of  his  great  love  and  reverence  he 
composed  a  work  which,  although  it 
added  little  to  the  Art  of  Biography,  is 
a  real  addition  to  the  world's  source  of 
pleasure,  being  itself  a  work  of  art. 
You  will  not  find  an  orderly  or  con- 
secutive narrative  of  the  career  of  Saint 
Louis,  but  you  will  find  his  most  im- 
portant events  properly  described,  and 
you  will  be  able  to  look,  as  through 
peepholes,  into  his  very  heart.  Not 
merely  that;  you  will  become  ac- 
quainted with  the  Barons  of  France 
and  the  other  Crusaders  who  devoted 
themselves  to  the  King's  service,  and 
you  will  understand  the  motives  and 
practices  of  an  entire  caste,  the  caste 
which  was  swayed  by  the  ideals  of 
Chivalry.  Next  to  Saint  Louis,  Join- 
ville  himself  may  be  regarded  as  the 
hero  of  the  book,  because  he  pours  out 

62 


r 


MEDIEVAL  TO  MODERN 

in  it  his  own  likes  and  dislikes,  and  his 
criticism  of  men  and  of  pohcy. 

I  find  him  an  agreeable  companion. 
Fashion  in  modern  biography  does  not 
approve  the  too  frequent  intrusion  oi 
the  biographer  himself,  or  his  opinions. 
But  any  reader  who  quarrels  with  Join- 
ville  on  this  score  must  be  a  rigid  for- 
malist .in  danger  of  petrifying  into  a 
pedant;  and  pedants  are  beyond  the 
reach  of  the  divinest  art.  Some  one 
has  suggested  that  Joinville  comes  sec- 
ond between  Villehardouin  and  Frois- 
sart  among  the  old  French  historians, 
and  that  he  embodies  the  manhood 
prime  of  that  state  of  society,  just  as 
Froissart  represents  its  decadence. 

Joinville  describes  to  us  men  and 
women  who  actually  believed  in  Chiv- 
alry, and  Hved  it,  and  joyously  served 
their  sovereign,  who  was  to  them  both 
king  and  model.  The  people  of  that 
age,    however,    had    another    ideal    ot 

63 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

sainthood,  and  Francis  of  Assisi  was  its 
edifying  pattern. 

The  book  entitled  "The  Little 
Flowers  of  St.  Francis,"  probably 
written  by  an  unknown  monk  of  the 
thirteenth  century,  is  not  a  formal 
biography,  but  a  collection  of  the  say- 
ings and  acts  of  St.  Francis  told  most 
naively  and  sweetly.  The  Saint  could 
not  have  written  an  autobiography, 
because  for  him  to  narrate  himself 
many  of  his  miracles  and  benevolent 
acts,  would  seem  indelicate.  But,  for 
accomplishing  the  purpose  which  the 
author  intended,  he  could  have  em- 
ployed no  better  form  of  composition. 
After  reading  the  Fioretti  you  feel  that 
you  know  St.  Francis,  and  you  are  so 
thoroughly  imbued  with  the  uncritical, 
myth-making,  and  miracle-seeing  world 
in  which  he  lived  that  it  all  seems  very 
natural.  You  follow  intimately  the 
every-day  life  of  a  holy  person  at  the 

64 


MEDIEVAL  TO  MODERN 

end  of  the  Middle  Age,  who  devoted 
himself  to  altruistic  work. 

In  the  "Imitation  of  Christ/'  which 
was  written  in  the  fifteenth  century, 
and  Thomas  a  Kempis  still  seems  to 
have  the  best  claim  to  be  its  author, 
we  meet  the  third  type  of  medieval 
personality,  the  man  who  was  wholly 
absorbed  in  his  religious  meditations, 
prayers,  and  self-depreciations.  It  is 
an  unapproached  record  of  the  ascetic, 
who  strives  almost  frantically  to  save 
his  own  soul.  Some  one  has  remarked 
that  from  first  to  last  he  is  so  obsessed 
by  this  purpose  that  he  never  mentions 
saving  the  soul  of,  or  even  helping, 
any  one  else.  And  yet  Christ  bade  us 
give  up  our  individual  life  for  the 
sake  of  another,  and  find  our  own 
soul  by  losing  it  for  the  sake  of  an- 
other. 

These  three  books  which  portray,  in 
St.  Louis  the  Christian  knight  and  cru- 

•   65 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

sader  performing  his  duty  according  to 
the  ideals  of  chivalry;  the  Christian 
St.  Francis  seeking  altruistic  ideals; 
and  the  Christian  ascetic  imprisoned 
in  himself,  desperately  clutching  at  the 
salvation  of  his  own  soul,  reveal  to  us, 
by  biography  and  by  pseudo-biography, 
many  most  characteristic  elements  of 
Medieval  Man. 

Coming  down  a  century  and  a  half, 
the  next  example  I  shall  mention  is  the 
''Life  of  Cardinal  Wolsey,"  by  his 
Gentleman  Usher,  George  Cavendish. 
Wolsey,  you  will  remember,  was  both 
an  ecclesiastic  and  the  chief  adviser  of 
Henry  VIII  —  one  of  those  double- 
natured  men,  a  layman  on  one  side 
and  an  official  churchman  on  the  other, 
several  of  whom,  before  and  after  the 
Reformation,  served  as  prime  ministers 
for  the  monarchs  of  Spain,  France,  and 
England.  He  belongs  in  the  list  with 
Ximenes,  Richelieu,  Mazarin,  Fleury, 

66 


MEDIEVAL  TO  MODERN 

and  Alberoni.  Judged  by  whatever 
standard,  Wolsey,  the  butcher's  son, 
was  one  of  the  greatest  of  EngHsh 
statesmen — the  first,  I  should  say,  who 
had  a  vision  of  England  as  a  dominant 
force  in  the  world-pohtics  of  that  era. 
Cavendish's  ''Life"  of  him  is  much 
more  personal  than  political,  so  that 
any  one  who  reads  it  for  a  forthright 
narrative  of  events  will  be  disappointed. 
But  if  you  read  it  as  a  biography  which 
gives  in  a  series  of  memorable  pictures 
the  important  crises  in  an  extraordinary 
career,  you  will  not  be  disappointed. 
The  steps  by  which  the  humble  butch- 
er's son  was  befriended  and  sent  to 
Oxford,  where  he  graduated  at  fifteen 
and  then  took  orders,  and  was  rapidly 
promoted,  became  chaplain  to  Henry 
VII  at  thirty-four,  Dean  of  Lincoln  at 
thitty-seven,  Almoner  to  Henry  VIII 
the  next  year,  Bishop  of  Lincoln  at 
forty-three,   and  Archbishop   of  York 

67 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

the  same  year  [15 14],  and  Cardinal  the 
next  year,  are  briefly  indicated. 

But  the  substance  of  the  book  relates 
to  Wolsey's  close  companionship  with 
the  headstrong  and  vicious  Henry  VHI. 
Among  the  paradoxes  of  history  at 
which  we  have  a  right  to  smile  is  the 
English  Reformation,  promoted  by 
Wolsey  to  gratify  the  temporal  ambi- 
tion of  the  young  king,  while  he  himself 
was  intriguing  to  be  made  Pope  of  the 
Roman  Church,  from  which  he  was 
really  separating  England.  The  reader 
of  Cavendish,  however,  is  likely  to  re- 
member longest  those  passages  in  which 
the  biographer  describes  the  eclipse  of 
his  master.  What  can  be  more  piti- 
able, for  instance,  than  the  death-bed 
scene,  in  which  the  Cardinal  is  deserted 
by  every  one  except  Cavendish  and  a 
few  devoted  followers,  and  is  not  even 
allowed  to  die  in  peace  by  the  rapacious 
and    heartless    King .?     Having    heard 

68 


MEDIEVAL  TO  MODERN 

that  Wolsey,  in  his  disgrace,  still  had 
a  few  hundred  pounds,  which  the  royal 
vultures  had  been  unable  to  scent  and 
seize,  Henry  despatched  a  messenger, 
a  "Mr.  Kingstone,"  to  demand  them 
of  the  dying  man.  And  so  true  a  ser- 
vant of  Henry  was  Mr.  Kingstone  that 
he  almost  interrupted  the  administer- 
ing of  extreme  unction  to  the  fast- 
failing  Cardinal. 

Although  Cavendish  can  hardly  be 
claimed  as  an  innovator  in  Biography, 
those  passages  of  his  which  I  refer  to 
show  that  he  was  sensitive  to  the  im- 
portance of  personal  details  —  a  direc- 
tion in  which  the  Art  was  to  develop 
until  it  reached  its  highest  expression. 

History  shows  few  examples  of  the 
fall  of  a  mighty  personage  from  tower- 
ing splendor  and  domination  into  the 
dust,  equal  to  Wolsey's,  and  in  Caven- 
dish's simple  narrative  the  tragic  con- 
trast is  all  the  more  impressive  because 

69 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

of  the  absence  of  all  effort  to  produce  a 
melodramatic  effect.  We  see  Wolsey's 
utter  surprise  and  blank  amazement  at 
it.  We  see  also  how  it  sobered  and  sad- 
dened the  honest  Cavendish,  who  could 
not  understand  how  such  a  calamity 
could,  by  God's  Providence,  be  allowed 
to  strike  down  such  a  man.  That  the 
truly  great  statesman  Wolsey  should 
be  the  sport  and  victim  of  the  violent 
and  lascivious  Henry  and  his  shameless 
paramour  Anne  Boleyn,  sorely  tested 
Cavendish's  religious  trust.  His  bi- 
ography illustrates  how  much  the  pe- 
culiar qualities  of  the  biographer  help 
to  make  or  mar  a  biography.  In  truth, 
the  ideal  biographer  is  one  who  is  so 
sensitive  to  his  subject's  qualities  that 
he,  better  than  any  one  else,  perceives 
them.  He  may  not  be  a  master  in  the 
art  of  expression,  but  if  his  divination 
is  sure,  this  lack  also  may  be  compen- 
sated.    No  one  can  doubt  this  in  the 

70 


MEDIEVAL  TO  MODERN 

case  of  Cavendish,  who  saw  the  good 
side  and  the  noble  of  his  master,  who 
gave  his  own  affection  free  rein  and 
dedicated  himself  nearly  thirty  years 
later  to  publish  to  the  after-world 
Wolsey's  true  story. 

By  reading  that  story  and  by  com- 
paring it  with  Shakespeare's  portrait 
of  Wolsey  in  King  Henry  Fill  you  can 
see  the  difference  in  method  between 
a  sympathetic  chronicler  and  the  great- 
est of  dramatists.  Cavendish  makes 
Wolsey  say:  "If  I  had  served  God  as 
diligently  as  I  have  the  king,  he  would 
not  have  given  me  over  in  my  grey 
hairs."  This  becomes,  by  Shake- 
speare's magic: 

"Oh  Cromwell,  Cromwell! 
Had  I  but  served  my  God  with  half  the  zeal 
I  served  my  king,  he  would  not  in  mine  age 
Have  left  me  naked  to  mine  enemies." 

Do  we  not  feel  throughout  that  Shake- 
speare has  almost  adopted  Cavendish's 

71 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

view  of  the  Cardinal  ?  The  words 
which  he  puts  into  the  mouth  of 
Thomas  Cromwell  in  rebuking  Gardi- 
ner, the  Bishop  of  Winchester,  are  but 
the  refrain  which  murmurs  half-plain- 
tively  from  many  of  the  biographer's 
pages : 

"My  Lord  of  Winchester,  you  are  a  little, 
By  your  good  favour,  too  sharp;  men  so  noble. 
However  faulty,  yet  should  find  respect 
For  what  they  have  been:  'tis  a  cruelty 
To  load  a  falHng  man." 

Shakespeare's  other  historical  plays 
abound,  of  course,  in  lines  and  passages 
based  on  Holinshed  and  other  chron- 
iclers, and  no  one  can  fail  to  perceive 
how  much  he  borrowed  from  Plutarch's 
sketch  of  Julius  Caesar  for  his  portrait 
of  the  noblest  Roman  of  them  all.  To 
have  inspired  Shakespeare  would  save 
Cavendish  from  oblivion,  but  the  ac- 
tual worth  of  the  biography  will  keep 
it  alive  as  long  as  men  prize  genuine 

72 


MEDIEVAL  TO  MODERN 

fragments    of   human    life    and    tragic 
fortune. 

One  of  Wolsey's  contemporaries 
whose  Hfe  has  lasting  smack  and  flavor 
was  Sir  Thomas  More,  and  his  son-in- 
law,  Roper,  wrote  a  biography  which 
should  be  read  along  with  Cavendish's, 
by  any  one  who  wishes  to  know  the 
prevalent  ideals  in  biography  toward 
the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  in 
England.  The  book  is  also  of  much 
intrinsic  interest,  as  it  should  be  to 
give  a  truthful  report  of  More,  in 
whom  humor  and  wisdom  were  finely 
blended,  and  whose  character  shone 
forth  nobly  in  a  time  of  turncoats  and 
sycophants.  In  the  main.  Roper  fol- 
lows without  imitating  (because,  as  he 
probably  never  saw  Cavendish's  book 
in  manuscript,  he  could  not  have  imi- 
tated it)  the  meandering  method  of  the 
"Life  of  Wolsey."  Most  biographers 
in  that  age  preferred  that  method.     It 

73 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

was  as  if  they  sat  down  with  you  and 
talked  over  the  career  of  their  subject, 
remembering  this  or  that  point  as  they 
talked  on,  quite  indifferent  to  the 
bounds  of  time  and  sequence. 

The  ItaHan  Renaissance  produced 
one  splendid  biographical  monument, 
in  the  "Lives  of  the  Most  Excellent 
Painters,  Sculptors  and  Architects," 
by  George  Vasari.  The  collection  cov- 
ers the  three  centuries  from  Giotto  and 
the  Pisani  to  Vasari's  own  contem- 
poraries, including  Titian  and  Tinto- 
ret.  The  individual  sketches,  especially 
those  of  the  men  of  the  last  century 
treated  by  Vasari,  are  probably  more 
nearly  correct  than  are  those  of  most 
of  Plutarch's  subjects  who  lived  cen- 
turies before  Plutarch  himself  wrote. 
Vasari  may  have  been  personally  ac- 
quainted with  the  chief  Masters  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  and  he  heard  the 
facts  and  gossip  about  those  whom  he 

74 


MEDIEVAL  TO  MODERN 

did  not  personally  know.  You  get  the 
impression,  therefore,  of  the  sort  of 
man  each  of  them  was,  and  you  learn 
a  great  many  things  about  his  profes- 
sional career  —  who  employed  him,  and 
how  much  he  was  paid.  In  addition  to 
all  this,  Vasari  frequently  adds  his  own 
criticisms  of  the  paintings,  statues,  and 
buildings,  so  that  you  have  the  stand- 
ard of  art  criticism  of  one  of  the  later 
masters  of  the  Renaissance,  and  what, 
in  many  cases,  was  certainly  the  fash- 
ionable or  orthodox  verdict  of  the 
time. 

Coming  back  to  English  writers  the 
Lives  written  by  Sir  Izaak  Walton 
must  not  be  overlooked.  They  have 
in  their  way  the  charm  which  has  de- 
lighted generations  of  readers  of  ''The 
Compleat  Angler,"  and  they  describe 
men  who  were  themselves  interesting. 
They  are  truly  landmarks,  although  in 
their    composition    they    represent    no 

75 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

new  advance.  Walton  was  a  pains- 
taking searcher  for  facts,  as  his  appen- 
dix to  the  "Life  of  Mr.  Richard 
Hooker"  bears  witness.  But  brute 
dates  and  events  seem  of  secondary  im- 
portance compared  with  his  delightful 
gossip  about  his  subjects.  I  think  of 
him  as  on  a  sunny  summer  afternoon, 
sitting  under  the  shade  of  a  tree  and  pa- 
tiently waiting  for  a  fish  to  bite  his 
hook,  enjoying  the  angler's  mild  sus- 
pense, which  does  not,  however,  cut  him 
off  from  a  cosey  and  quiet  chat  with  a 
friend.  How  much  of  himself  goes  into 
his  sketches,  and  how  glad  we  are  to 
have  it ! 

The  personal  quality — that  deter- 
mines our  likes  and  dislikes,  our  pleas- 
ures and  our  pains  !  Strictly  speaking, 
of  course,  we  ought  to  have  as  little  as 
possible  of  the  personality  of  the  bi- 
ographer intruded  into  his  work,  and 
yet,  being  human,  we  not  only  tolerate 

1^ 


MEDIEVAL  TO  MODERN 

but  enjoy  it,  when  it  does  not  wrong 
the  truth.  And  especially  to  the  older 
writers,  whether  Plutarch  or  Joinville 
or  Cavendish,  we  willingly  grant  the 
privilege  of  expressing  their  own  opin- 
ions. 

Although  he  was  not  primarily  a 
biographer,  I  must  not  pass  over  Lord 
Clarendon,  whose  history  is  rich  in 
some  of  the  best-drawn  portraits  in 
existence.  He  had  an  eye  for  seeing 
features,  and  complexion,  and  the  play 
of  expression,  and  for  reproducing 
them  all  on  the  printed  page  as  won- 
derfully as  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  does 
on  canvas.  And  any  one  who  loves 
the  splendor  of  jeweled  words,  and  the 
beauty  of  elegant  but  unaffected  phrase, 
glories  over  the  way  in  which  Claren- 
don knew  how  to  match  precious  sub- 
stance with  rare  style.  Those  por- 
traits of  his  are  like  the  heads  cut  by 
the   antique   lapidary   on   emerald   or 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

sapphire,  and  not  on  common  onyx  or 
carnelian. 

Perhaps  the  most  personal  records 
of  all  are  those  which  cannot  be  classed 
as  biographical  and  yet,  nevertheless, 
reveal  passion  at  its  supreme  moments. 
Take  the  "Letters  of  Abelard  and  He- 
loise":  their  passion  keeps  them  alive 
after  eight  hundred  years.  Likewise, 
many  Autobiographies  or  Confessions 
burn  with  an  undying  glow.  Much  of 
the  passionate  emotion,  worship,  love, 
remorse,  and  spiritual  distress  speaks 
out  of  the  Old  Testament  from  indi- 
viduals whose  names  are  forgotten. 
The  passion  lives  on,  although  the 
heart  which  it  consumed  has  van- 
ished. , 

So  I  have  said  nothing  about  Auto- 
biography, and  the  reason  must  be 
//evident.  Autobiography  is  not  like 
Biography,  an  art  whose  development 
we  can  trace.     It  is  the  record  of  in- 

78 


MEDIEVAL  TO  MODERN 

dividual  lives  by  the  men  themselves. 
It  may  be  as  abstract  as  are  the 
Thoughts  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  and  tell 
us  little  about  the  external  life  of  the 
man  but  unfold  to  us  in  the  amplest 
confidence  the  very  stuff  his  soul  was 
made  of.  The  Confessions  of  St.  Au- 
gustine are  equally  soul-revelations, 
as  if  the  lightnings  of  the  Eternal 
flashed  down  into  the  Saint's  being,  and 
lighted  it  up  with  terrible  distinctness. 
But  how  shall  we  compare  his  Confes- 
sions with  Rousseau's,  or  with  the  as- 
tonishing revelations  of  Benvenuto  Cel- 
lini ?  We  appraise  an  autobiography 
by  its  representative  value  and  by  its 
literary  expression.  Although  many 
autobiographies  do  not  spring  from  St. 
Augustine's  spiritual  depths,  they  are 
still  precious.  If  you  but  analyze  your- 
self truly  and  have  some  indefina- 
ble charm  in  your  nature  —  something 
which  you  yourself  do  not  suspect,  but 

79 


THE  ART  OF   BipGRAPHY 

which  the  world  deUghts  in  —  your 
story  of  yourself  is  bound  to  live.  It 
may  be  that  you  have  not  charm,  but 
that  your  experience  is  so  unusual,  so 
full  of  real  interest,  that  it  will  attract 
as  Solomon  Maimon's  does,  or  as 
Richard  Jefferies's  "The  Story  of  My 
Heart"  does.  And,  as  persons  repel 
as  well  as  attract,  so  do  their  Confes- 
sions. A  literary  friend  of  mine  to 
whom  I  had  attributed  a  catholic 
taste,  tried  to  read  **The  Story  of  My 
Heart,''  and  he  confessed  to  me  with 
a  frankness  which  never  deserted  him, 
that  he  had  found  it  so  abominable 
that  he  burnt  it,  unfinished,  in  the 
furnace.  I  have  always  wondered 
what  there  was  in  it  which  so  aroused 
his  indignant  aversion. 

I  was  reading  lately  Lord  Morley's 
''Recollections,"  and  I  laid  the  book 
down  with  great  disappointment. 
Why  was  I  disappointed  ^     Here  was 

80 


MEDIEVAL  TO  MODERN 

a  work  by  the  foremost  man  of  letters 
in  England  since  Tennyson  died,  a 
man  who  while  still  very  young  won 
a  high  place  in  the  esteem  of  the  only 
public  whose  verdict  really  counts,  and 
who  has  continued  during  half  a  cen- 
tury not  merely  to  justify  the  early 
applause  but  to  reach  other  heights. 
A  mere  author  may  live  aloof  from  the 
world  and  produce  his  novels,  or  poems, 
or  histories  in  privacy,  as  a  bird  sings 
from  a  tree  whose  foliage  hides  him. 
But  Morley  strode  into  the  arena 
where  every  motion  of  the  gladiator  is 
public,  and  there  he  took  and  gave 
blows,  and  championed  the  cause  of 
almost  every  radicalism  which,  for  good 
or  for  evil,  has  transformed  the  com- 
placent, conservative  English-speaking 
world  of  1850  into  the  whirling  vor- 
tex of  to-day.  From  publicist  and  po- 
lemic he  became  politician  and  states- 
man,  and   spent   thirty-five   years    in 

81 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

Parliament.  He  fought  in  the  great 
battles  for  Home  Rule;  he  was  a  Cab- 
inet Minister  and  President  of  the 
Council;  in  menacing  crises  England 
chose  him  to  be  Chief  Secretary  for 
Ireland  and  later  Chief  Secretary  for 
India;  he  was  the  intimate  and  con- 
fidant of  Gladstone  and  his  biogra- 
pher. 

Better  than  any  one  else  of  his  age 
John  Morley  seems  to  fulfil  the  ideal 
which  St.  Paul  set  for  himself:  he  had 
unlimited  sympathy,  and  was  made  all 
things  to  all  men  by  that  sympathy. 
This  does  not  mean  that  he  gave  up 
his  own  essential  nature,  that  he  ac- 
quiesced meanly,  or  compromised  from 
a  desire  to  please,  or  that  he  was  sim- 
ply a  chameleon.  It  means  that  he 
held  in  abeyance  his  idiosyncrasies  so 
that  they  should  not  prevent  him  from 
understanding  you  perfectly;  having 
that  understanding  he  could  the  better 

82 


MEDIEVAL  TO  MODERN 

persuade  you,  argue  with  you,  perhaps 
even  win  you  over. 

And  yet  I  was  disappointed.  The 
two  volumes  of  his  ''Recollections"  do 
not  spring  from  his  heart  and  passion, 
but  from  his  intellect,  his  fund  of  infor- 
mation. The  larger  part  of  one  volume 
is  loaded  with  letters  to  the  Earl  of 
Minto,  the  Viceroy  of  India,  which  let 
us  see  Lord  Morley  as  a  perfect  official 
letter-writer,  abounding  in  culture,  in 
special  knowledge,  and  in  urbanity, 
but  never  off  his  guard,  never  spon- 
taneous. Read  John  Stuart  MilFs 
''Autobiography"  in  order  to  perceive 
how  a  man  of  Morley's  type,  intellec- 
tual and  rational,  can  ytl  feel  and  utter 
his  feeling. 

But  my  theme  is  Biography  and  I 
touch  on  Autobiography  merely  to 
show  how  different  it  is,  and  how  differ- 
ent must  be  the  criteria  by  which  we 
judge  it.     As  in  the  case  of  Fiction, 

83 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

however,  the  influence  of  Autobiog- 
raphy on  the  writing  of  Biography  has 
probably  been  greater  than  biographers 
or  readers  suspect.  When  we  became 
accustomed  to  the  intimate  revelations 
which  persons  who  wrote  their  own 
lives  vouchsafed  to  us,  we  came  to  ex- 
pect something  similar  in  the  portraits 
which  biographers  drew  of  their  sub- 
jects. The  best  of  all  human  docu- 
ments happens  to  be  Boswell's  "Life  of 
Samuel  Johnson/'  and  not  an  Autobi- 
ography of  Johnson  by  himself;  but 
the  reason  why  Boswell's  work  holds 
the  primacy  is  precisely  because  we 
feel  that  it  could  not  have  been  better 
if  Johnson  himself  had  written  it. 
iThis  leads  me  to  remark  that  the  fact 
that  a  man  knows  himself  better  than 
L-  anybody  else  can  know  him  does  not 
necessarily  imply  that  he  can  write  the 
best  story  about  himself.  This  is  a 
matter  of  Art  rather  than  of  Knowl- 

84 


r\ 


MEDIEVAL  TO  MODERN 

edge,  and  I  hope  later  to  refer  to  it 
briefly. 

Johnson's  "Lives' of  the  Most  Emi- 
nent English  Poets:  With  Critical 
Observations  on  Their  Works"  may 
be  regarded  as  a  monument  either  in 
Biography  or  in  literary  criticism.  I 
believe  that  current  fashion  in  criti- 
cism sneers  at  old  Doctor  Johnson,  and 
indeed  I  doubt  whether  most  of  the 
critics  have  ever  read  him.  If  he 
could  glance  at  those  masterpieces 
which  sometimes  live  a  month  which 
they  load  with  their  praises,  I  suspect 
that  he  would  say:  *'Tut !  tut!  Sir, 
a  man  might  write  such  stuff  forever 
if  he  would  abandon  his  mind  to  it."* 
And  yet  a  mind  whose  tastes  and  stand- 
ards have  not  been  formed  by  the 
literary  gossip  of  newspapers  from  day 
to  day  will  discover  in  Johnson  a 
corpus  of  sound  criticism. 

*  Boswell,  IV,  183. 
85 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

The  biographical  part  of  his  "Lives" 
is  subordinate  to  the  critical.  He 
gives  a  straightforward  account  of  a 
man  before  discussing  the  poems,  but 
he  never  fails  to  note  pertinent  facts 
or  illustrative  anecdotes  concerning  the 
man  as  well  as  the  poet.  And,  like  his 
own  Boswell,  he  sometimes  recalls 
mere  habits  which  bring  the  human 
side  of  his  subject  nearer  to  us.  Thus, 
in  his  essay  on  Milton,  he  mentions 
such  a  detail  as  this:  "When  he  did 
not  care  to  rise  early,  he  had  some- 
thing read  to  him  by  his  bedside;  per- 
haps at  this  time  his  daughters  were 
employed.  He  composed  much  in  the 
morning  and  dictated  in  the  day,  sit- 
ting obliquely  in  an  elbow-chair,  with 
his  leg  thrown  over  the  arm." 

Several  other  of  Doctor  Johnson's 
"Lives"  besides  that  of  Milton,  es- 
pecially those  of  Dryden,  Swift,  Pope, 
and  Savage,  are  of  considerable  bulk, 

86 


MEDIEVAL  TO  MODERN 

and  as  specimens  of  brief  biography 
they  seem  to  me  to  be  not  inferior  to 
similar  modern  examples.  The  modern 
are  different  in  many  respects,  and 
probably  the  reader  to-day  finds  them 
easier  to  read  than  he  does  Johnson, 
because  they  are  written  in  the  dialect 
of  to-day.  But  I  doubt  whether,  on 
the  whole,  the  modern  surpass  John- 
son's in  fundamental  biographical  sub- 
stance. 

By  a  singular  and  happy  coincidence 
Doctor  Johnson  found  in  James  Bos- 
well  his  perfect  biographer.  Look  at 
him  from  any  angle  you  will,  it  must 
seem  incredible  that  the  old  Doctor, 
with  his  queer  ways,  his  scrofula,  his 
tea-drinking,  his  other-mindedness,  his 
brusque  and  almost  brutal  retorts,  his 
sordid  dwelling,  should  have  been  bet- 
ter known  to  five  generations  of  Eng- 
lish-speaking people  throughout  the 
world  than  any  other  individual.     "He 

87 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

had  genius,"  you  say,  "and  the  world 
is  always  interested  in  genius,"  but 
there  have  been  men  of  far  greater 
genius  than  his  of  whom  we  have  not  a 
tenth  of  the  personal  details  that  Bos- 
well  has  told  us  of  him.  Somebody  has 
reconstructed  the  life  of  Frederick  the 
Great,  day  by  day,  from  his  birth  to  his 
death,  but  assuredly  such  a  monu- 
mental monstrosity  —  worthy  to  stand 
beside  the  Leipsic  Sieges  Denkmal  — 
will  never  have  enthusiastic  readers,  at 
least  outside  of  Germany.  And  even 
there  it  may  require  the  incentive  of  a 
cash  prize  to  induce  many  to  read  it 
through.  When  I  apply  the  phrase 
"enthusiastic  readers"  to  Boswell,  I  am 
hardly  correct,  for  those  who  read  him 
at  all  soon  rise  above  the  stage  of  de- 
monstrative enthusiasm  where  they 
feel  that  admiring  adjectives  are  as  un- 
necessary as  lovers  of  landscape  do, 
when  they  watch  a  sunset,  or  a  tempest 

88 


MEDIEVAL  TO  MODERN 

at   sea,   or   shadows   and   sunshine   at 
play  among  the  mountains. 

And  yet  this  same  James  Boswell 
who  produced  the  chief  masterpiece  in 
modern  biography  was  long  in  getting 
even  a  nod  of  recognition  from  the 
critical  public.  Everybody  saw  the 
greatness  of  his  "Life  of  Johnson,"  and 
in  a  very  few  years  after  its  publication 
that  book  became  a  part  of  the  intel- 
lectual equipment  of  cultivated  persons 
throughout  the  English-speaking  world, 
and  it  has  never  ceased  to  hold  this 
place.  Even  now,  those  who  admire 
the  biography  admit  only  grudgingly 
the  claims  of  Bozzy.  Nevertheless, 
masterpieces  are  not  produced  by  man- 
ikins. Sometimes,  however,  the  gulf 
of  disenchantment  opens  between  the 
man  and  his  work.  We  regret,  for  in- 
stance, when  we  learn  of  it,  the  sordid- 
ness  of  J.  M.  W.  Turner's  character  and 
life,  and  we  are  glad  that  oblivion  has 

89 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

screened  us  from  knowing  too  much 
about  the  Elizabethan  dramatists  or 
the  painters  of  the  Itahan  Renaissance. 

Boswell's  bad  reputation  with  pos- 
terity was  fixed  by  Macaulay,  who  saw 
characters  as  painters  in  the  Levant 
see  landscape,  a  blaze  of  sunlight 
contrasted  with  unmodulated  silhou- 
ettes and  shadows.  Macaulay  never 
wrote  a  sentence  which  the  youngest 
reader  could  not  understand.  When, 
therefore,  he  took  Boswell  for  a  sitter 
he  left  nothing  uncertain,  no  margin 
for  speculation,  no  borderland  for 
doubt.  In  many  a  passage,  which 
ninety  years  ago  rang  with  metallic 
clearness  through  the  world,  he  held 
poor  Boswell  up  for  contempt  and 
odium.  As  a  model  of  portraiture 
by  vituperation,  Macaulay's  sketch  of 
Boswell  can  hardly  be  matched.  Let 
me  quote  a  part  of  a  famous  passage: 

"He  was  the  laughingstock  of  the 

90 


MEDIEVAL  TO  MODERN 

whole  of  that  brilliant  society  which  has- 
owed  to  him  the  greater  part  of  its 
fame.  He  was  always  laying  himself  at 
the  feet  of  some  eminent  man,  and  beg- 
ging to  be  spit  upon  and  trampled 
upon.  He  was  always  earning  some 
ridiculous  nickname,  and  then  'binding 
it  as  a  crown  unto  him'  —  not  merely 
in  metaphor,  but  literally.  He  ex- 
hibited himself  at  the  Shakspeare  Jubi- 
lee, to  all  the  crowd  which  filled  Strat- 
ford-on-Avon,  with  a  placard  around 
his  hat,  bearing  the  inscription  of 
Corsica  Boswell.  In  his  tour,  he  pro- 
claimed to  all  the  world,  that  at  Edin- 
burgh he  was  known  by  the  appellation 
of  Paoli  Boswell.  Servile  and  imper- 
tinent, —  shallow  and  pedantic,  —  a 
bigot  and  a  sot,  —  bloated  with  family 
pride,  and  eternally  blustering  about 
the  dignity  of  a  born  gentleman,  yet 
stooping  to  be  a  talebearer,  an  eaves- 
dropper, a  common  butt  in  the  taverns 

91 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

of  London,  —  so  curious  to  know  every- 
body who  was  talked  about,  that,  Tory 
and  High  Churchman  as  he  was,  he 
manoeuvred,  we  have  been  told,  for  an 
introduction  to  Tom  Paine,  —  so  vain 
of  the  most  childish  distinctions,  that, 
when  he  had  been  to  court,  he  drove  to 
the  office  where  his  book  was  being 
printed  without  changing  his  clothes, 
and  summoned  all  the  printers'  devils 
to  admire  his  new  ruffles  and  sword;  — 
such  was  this  man;  —  and  such  he  was 
content  and  proud  to  be.  Everything 
which  another  man  would  have  hidden, 
—  everything,  the  publication  of  which 
would  have  made  another  man  hang 
himself,  was  matter  of  gay  and  clamor- 
ous exultation  to  his  weak  and  diseased 
mind." 

It  happens  that  Carlyle  wrote  about 
Boswell  at  the  same  time  as  Macaulay. 
He  had  the  same  facts  to  draw  his  in- 
ferences from.     He,   too,   knew  all  of 

92 


MEDIEVAL  TO  MODERN 

Boswell's  foibles  and  the  many  tradi- 
tions, mostly  disparaging,  which  circled 
round  his  reputation.  Nevertheless, 
Carlyle  discovered  in  Boswell  some- 
thing which  Macaulay  did  not  see.  In 
his  impetuous,  deeply  penetrating,  pas- 
sionate strokes,  he  says: 

"Boswell  was  a  person  whose  mean 
or  bad  qualities  lay  open  to  the  general 
eye;    visible,  palpable  to  the  dullest. 
His  good  qualities,  again,  belonged  not 
to  the  time  he  lived  in;   were  far  from        ; 
common  then;    indeed,  in  such  a  de-       ; 
gree    were    almost    unexampled;    not 
recognizable   therefore   by  every  one;       \ 
nay,   apt  even   (so   strange  had   they       | 
grown)  to  be  confounded  with  the  very 
vices  they  lay  contiguous  to  and  had        \ 
sprung  out  of.     That  he  was  a  wine-       . 
bibber   and   gross   liver;    gluttonously        I 
fond  of  whatever  would  yield  him  a 
little    solacement,    were    it    only    of       ' 
a   stomachic  character,   is   undeniable        | 

93 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

enough.  That  he  was  vain,  heedless, 
a  babbler;  had  much  of  the  sycophant, 
alternating  with  the  braggadocio,  curi- 
ously spiced  too  with  an  all-pervading 
dash  of  the  coxcomb;  that  he  gloried 
much  when  the  tailor,  by  a  court-suit, 
had  made  a  new  man  of  him;  that  he 
appeared  at  the  Shakspeare  Jubilee 
with  a  ribbon  imprinted  'Corsica  Bos- 
well  J  round  his  hat;  and  in  short,  if 
you  will,  lived  no  day  of  his  life  without 
doing  and  saying  more  than  one  pre- 
tentious ineptitude:  all  this  unhappily 
is  evident  as  the  sun  at  noon/' 

Here  you  see  are  the  same  elements, 
and  yet  the  impression  left  upon  you 
is  not  that  of  despising  or  loathing,  but 
rather  that  of  suspended  judgment. 
Admitting  that  Boswell  had  all  these 
defects,  Carlyle  lets  you  imply  that  the 
cheap  and  tawdry  fellow  still  possessed 
qualities  which  would  retrieve  him. 
Carlyle    himself    looked    through    the 

94 


MEDIEVAL  TO  MODERN 

eyes  of  Sympathy,  without  which  we 
cannot  well  understand  the  hearts  of 
men  and  the  mainspring  of  causes. 

Would  it  not  be  an  astonishing  thing 
if  a  poor  wine-bibbing  fop  —  and  noth- 
ing more  —  were  capable  of  creating  a 
really  stupendous  work  in  art  or  litera- 
ture ?  A  common  ruffian  in  the  dig- 
gings of  the  Klondike  may  find  the 
largest  gold  nugget  on  record,  or  a  slave 
in  the  diamond  fields  of  Golconda  may 
unearth  a  Koh-i-noor;  but  a  work  of 
art,  a  true  book  or  painting,  a  statue 
or  temple,  does  not  exist  ready-made, 
needing  only  to  be  discovered  by  some 
fortunate  finder.  The  work  of  art  is  a 
creation,  and  it  can  never  come  into 
being  without  the  transmuting  agency  of 
the  artist.  Accordingly,  James  Boswell 
must  receive  the  credit  for  the  unique 
qualities  which  produced  his  "Life  of 
Samuel  Johnson. "  Do  not  suppose  that 
it  was  his  wine-bibbing,  or  his  syco- 

95 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

phancy,  or  his  fribbling  vanity,  or  any 
other  of  his  foibles  which  qualified  him 
for  his  Biography.  In  all  cases  where 
the  artist  seems  unworthy  of  his  work, 
remember  Emerson's  truth: 

"Not  from  a  vain  or  shallow  thought 
His  awful  Jove  young  Phidias  brought." 


/ 


\ 


/  What  is  the  secret  of  Boswell's  mas- 
tery \  First,  and  second,  and  third,  he 
was  a  highly  sensitized  photographic 
plate,   receptive  to  the  most  delicate 

\  impressions  from  Johnson.  He  saw 
s^  everything,  he  preserved  everything, 
but  his  sympathy  kept  him  from  mis- 
interpreting the  old  Doctor's  words  and 
gestures  and  acts.  Boswell  is  there  as 
a  transparent  glass  through  which  you 
look  at  the  real  Johnson.  The  glass 
is  not  tinged  or  flecked  to  give  you  a 
Boswellian  distortion.  Next  to  his 
gifts  of  transparency  and  of  receptivity 
and  of  sympathy  comes  his  gift  of  selec- 

96 


V 


MEDIEVAL  TO  MODERN 

tion. ,  This  is  the  distinctive  talent  of 
the  artist,  and  with  him  it  seems  to 
have  been  intuitive.  He  knew  just 
what  to  choose  among  his  mass  of  ma- 
terials, and  he  chose  so  naturally  that 
there  seems  to  be  no  art  at  all.  He  had, 
too,  the  gift  of  emphasis,  which  is  only 
another  form  of  proportion. 

Almost  equally  rare  as  these  gifts 
was  his  power  of  expression,  or  literary 
style.  Most  persons  think  that  he  had 
no  style.  You  read  him  page  by  page, 
and  chapter  by  chapter,  and  are  never 
conscious  of  his  style.  Therein  lies  its 
excellence.  As  you  read  you  see  the 
things  he  tells  about  and  you  remem- 
ber the  episode  but  not  the  words 
he  used.  Transparency,  in  which  the 
author  does  not  project  himself  be- 
tween the  reader  and  the  text,  is  again 
the  talent.  You  have  only  to  reflect 
what  the  four  volumes  of  the  Biography 
of  Johnson    would    be    if   they    were 

97 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

written  by  Walter  Pater  or  any  other 
of  the  much  lauded  and  festooned 
official  modern  "stylists,"  in  order  to 
thank  God  that  James  Boswell  was 
none  of  them.  We  relish  a  little  guava 
jelly  now  and  then,  but  the  mere 
thought  of  it  through  four  octavo  vol- 
umes gives  one  nausea. 

I  make  no  attempt  to  discover  why 
it  is  that  Samuel  Johnson,  described 
in  the  minutest  details  by  his  devoted 
biographer,  should  so  captivate  genera- 
tion after  generation  of  readers.  One 
evident  attraction  is  Johnson's  wit. 
We  are  too  apt  to  think  of  him  as  the 
exploiter  of  a  ponderous  style,  as  being 
elephantine  in  his  person  and  move- 
ments, and  as  a  pompous  literary  auto- 
crat; but  what  made  him  triumph,  in 
spite  of  all  these,  was  wit,  at  once 
quick  and  sharp  and  sound  —  for  real 
wit  must  spring  from  sound  ideas  or 
it  is  merely  a  verbal  play  or  a  trick  of 

98 


MEDIEVAL  TO  MODERN 

expression.  Nearly  one  hundred  and 
forty  years  after  his  death,  I  find  in 
Bartlett's  **FamiHar  Quotations"  al- 
most a  hundred  of  Johnson's  sayings 
in  prose,  some  of  which  are  hke  house- 
hold words  and  every  one  of  them  has 
his  peculiar  stamp.  How  many  of  the 
professional  wits  to-day  will  be  thus 
lavishly  quoted  in  the  year  2060  ?  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw  makes  us  laugh,  but  his 
persiflage  compared  with  Johnson's 
fundamental  wit  seems  no  more  last- 
ing than  is  the  effervescence  on  a 
noisy  sparkling  stream. 

In  our  present  survey  of  the  devel-  V 
opment  of  the  Art  of  Biography,  Bos- 
well's  masterpiece  is  the  culmination. 
It  gave,  for  the  first  time,  a  complete         1 
account  of  a  human  being.     In  it  we         ^ 
have    not    merely    the    external    man 
and  a  narration  of  his  acts,  but  the 
inside  as  well  as  the  outside,  all  ade-         j 
quate  to  the  original.     The  wise  Bos-     x 

99 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

well  does  not  use  Johnson  as  a  figure 
on  whom  to  drape  any  theory  or  his 
own  prejudices.  His  vision  penetrates, 
not  because  he  has  an  eager  and  keen 
mind  which  delights  to  exercise  itself 
in  such  analysis,  but  because  he  has 
sympathy  and  love  which  not  only  see 
but  understand.  And,  whether  by  in- 
tuition or  by  intent,  he  commands  a 
f\  style  which  is  a  perfect  medium  for 
his  thoughts.  Finally,  he  has  for  a 
]  subject  acreature^stiange^  but  with 
/  a  strangeness  which  attracts  every 
one,  and  still,  after  these  many,  many 
years,  has  not  worn  out  the  world's 
interest. 


lOO 


Ill 


BIOGRAPHY  IN  THE  NINETEENTH 

CENTURY 

A  GOOD  many  years  ago,  when 
^  ^  Mr.  Howells  was  fighting  man- 
fully his  campaign  for  Realism,  he  re- 
marked that  if  the  novehst  could  get 
inside  of  the  heart  and  brain  of  a 
moke,  smoking  his  corn-cob  pipe  on  a 
log,  he  could  produce  a  portrait  which 
would  throw  Shakespeare's  Hamlet, 
or  any  other  masterpiece,  into  the 
shade.  I  do  not  believe  that  this  is 
literally  true.  I  do  not  believe  that 
the  brain  of  any  moke,  or  of  any  per- 
son now  living,  be  he  white,  black, 
yellow,  or  mottled,  could  match  Shake- 
speare's brain  in  interest.  Providence 
has  ordered  it  so  that,  although  we  are 
all  made  of  the  same  stuff,  that  stuff 

lOI 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

has  innumerable  varieties,  and,  hu- 
manly speaking,  those  varieties  are 
not  equal  in  interest,  in  charm,  or  in 
beauty  or  significance.  But  we  see 
what  Mr.  Howells  meant,  and  the  frag- 
j  ment  of  truth  in  his  meaning.  And 
there  are  many  biographies  to  prove 
-o,,  that  the  excellence  and  interest  of  a 

>  biography  do  not  depend  upon  the  high 
position  of  its  subject.  If  only  the  bi- 
ographer can  pluck  out  the  heart  of  a 
man  or  woman,  no  matter  how  hum- 
ble, and  reveal  it  truly,  the  world  will 
rejoice. 

The  modicum  of  truth  which  the 
Realist's  doctrine  contained,  passed 
into  fiction  and  other  forms  of  litera- 
ture, and  into  painting  and  into  sculp- 
ture. The  penalty  exacted  for  estab- 
lishing any  truth  is  exaggeration,  and 
for  a  good  while  Realism  ran  to  all 
lengths.  No  matter  how  inane  or 
sordid  or  putrescent  a  story  might  be, 

I02 


THE  NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

if  it  were  only  sufficiently  strewn  with 
dirt,  the  ReaHsts  hailed  it  as  a  master- 
piece; but  in  the  long  run  the  taste 
of  the  human  soul  is  more  to  be  relied 
upon  than  is  that  of  any  doctrinaire, 
and  the  time  came  when  the  human 
soul  repudiated  the  creed  of  dirt  for 
dirt's  sake.  But  the  good  which  Real- 
ism had  to  offer  remained,  and  we  see 
the  result  in  Biography  not  less  than 
in  Fiction. 

The  best  biographies  written  since 
1870  are  much  closer  to  life  than  those 
of  the  middle  and  earlier  part  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  Of  course  the 
adoption  of  the  scientific  method,  in 
following  which  men  studied  other 
men,  including  celebrities,  as  dispas- 
sionately as  they  studied  animals  or 
chemical  elements,  exerted  a  struc- 
tural influence  over  biography. 

Formerly,  if  a  biographer  were  writ- 
ing about  a  statesman,   for  instance, 

103 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

he  instinctively  carried  in  his  mind  the 
ideal  of  how  a  statesman  ought  to  be 
portrayed;  in  Hke  fashion  the  sculptor 
draped  him  in  a  toga,  holding  a  scroll 
of  orations  in  his  left  hand.  This 
served  as  well  as  a  sign-board  to  warn 
you  that  the  subject  was  a  statesman 
and  orator,  and  to  prepare  you  to  ex- 
amine the  statue  properly.  If  you  will 
compare  Stanhope's  "Life  of  William 
Pitt  the  Younger,"  with  John  Morley's 
''Life  of  Gladstone,'*  you  will  perceive 
the  change  that  had  come  about  in  less 
than  a  hundred  years,  in  the  writing  of 
biographies  of  statesmen;  and  even 
Mr.  Morley  was  less  "Reahstic"  than 
is  Mr.  Winston  Churchill  in  his  life  of 
his  father.  Lord  Randolph  Churchill. 
This  was  to  be  expected,  for  Mr.  Glad- 
stone was  almost  a  symbol,  and  in  his 
life  he  passed  through  the  typical  Eng- 
lish experiences  at  school,  at  the  Uni- 
versity, in  the  Anglican  Church,  and 

104 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

in  Parliament,  which  made  him  in  some 
respects  rather  the  carrier-on  and  em- 
bodiment of  traditions,  than  a  highly 
individuaHzed  person.  In  their  con- 
servatism the  EngHsh  still  cling  to  the 
medieval  habit  of  setting  the  Place 
above  the  Man.  They  write  about  the 
Regius  Professor  at  Oxford,  or  the 
Dean  of  St.  Paul's,  or  the  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury  without  giving  their 
family  names,  so  that  unless  you  have 
these,  and  a  thousand  others  stored 
away  in  your  memory,  you  must  con- 
sult some  reference  book  in  order  to 
discover  who  the  Professor  was,  or  the 
Dean  in  1830,  or  in  i860. 

This  English  practice  partly  ac- 
counts, I  think,  for  the  difference  be- 
tween English  and  American  biogra- 
phies of  officials.  We  speak  of  John 
C.  Calhoun  and  not  of  the  Senator 
from  South  Carolina,  of  Phillips  Brooks 
and  not  of  the   Protestant   Episcopal 

105 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

Bishop  of  Massachusetts,  of  John  Mar- 
shall and  not  of  the  Chief  Justice  of 
the  United  States,  and  so  of  all  the 
rest,  whom  we  refer  to  by  name  and 
not  by  title,  unless  there  is  a  particular 
reason  for  giving  the  title.  The  texture 
of  the  lives  led  by  the  Americans  was 
also  so  fresh  and  unconventional  that 
it  furnished  little  excuse  for  imitating 
the  English  practice  in  terminology. 
In  England  the  successful  man,  what- 
ever his  profession,  rose  to  this  or  that 
office,  which  may  have  existed  for  gen- 
erations, and  so  it  was  natural  for  him 
to  be  known  by  the  office  or  rank.  In 
the  United  States,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  pioneer  in  one  decade  might  be  a 
State  Governor  or  a  Bishop  or  a  Gen- 
eral in  the  next,  and  so  he  was  known 
for  himself,  and  not  for  his  office.  A 
perfect  example  is  Abraham  Lincoln, 
whom  the  most  conventional  of  English 
biographers  would   find   it   impossible 

io6 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

to  de-individualize.  Speaking  of  Lin- 
coln, let  me  commend,  in  passing,  a 
recent  biography  of  him  by  Lord 
Charnwood,  who,  though  not  an  Ameri- 
can, has  succeeded  in  a  remarkable 
way  in  understanding  what  I  may  call 
the  Americanism  of  Lincoln  and  of  his 
environment. 

We  might  suppose  that  having 
reached  in  BoswelFs  "Johnson"  the 
culmination  of  the  biographical  art,  we 
need  not  pursue  our  examination  far- 
ther. But,  in  fact,  evolution  does  not 
necessarily  stop  with  the  creation  of  a 
perfect  specimen,  and  the  nineteenth 
century  and  our  own  have  produced 
many  sorts  of  biography  which  call  for 
our  attention.  It  took  a  long  time  for 
BoswelFs  example  to  influence  other 
biographers.  The  traditional  idea  con- 
tinued that  biographies  must  be  con- 
structed according  to  well-recognized 
patterns.     Just  as  the  "dignity  of  his- 

'  107 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

tory"  had  to  be  respected,  so  respect 
for  the  "proprieties"  had  to  be  ob- 
served. The  intimate  life  of  a  man, 
his  every-day  doings,  his  weaknesses 
and  folHes  and  mistakes,  must  not  be 
mentioned.  But  he  must  be  described 
as  being  perpetually  on  parade,  the 
counterpart  of  the  portraits  of  men  in 
their  best  apparel.  This  fashion  has 
by  no  means  passed  away.  I  read  re- 
cently a  book  of  General  Robert  E. 
Lee,  which  was  so  stuffed  with  virtues 
that  I  began  to  doubt  the  existence  of 

I    any  virtue,  and  only  when  the  author 
stated  that  General  Lee  used  to  take 

i    his  ease  in  a  rocking-chair,  sitting  in 
his  stocking-feet,  did  I  perceive  that 

I     he  was  a  real  person. 

I  must  forego  any  attempt  to  criti- 
cise in  detail  even  the  foremost  of 
modern  biographies,  but  I  shall  touch 
upon  several  of  them  which  are  rep- 
resentative.    Earliest  among  the  Brit- 

io8 


THE   NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

ish  is  "Letters  and  Journals  of  Lord 
Byron,  with  Notices  of  his  Life,"  by 
Thomas  Moore,  which  was  published 
in  1830.  I  can  hardly  overpraise  By- 
ron's own  material,  which  forms  a  con- 
siderable part  of  this  work.  To  me 
he  seems  the  best  of  English  letter- 
writers,  in  the  sense  that  he  was  the 
most  spontaneous,  and,  so  to  speak, 
reckless,  uttering  his  thought  or  whim 
of  the  moment  without  concern  for 
publication  or  discretion.  Most  of 
the  other  famous  letter-writers  are 
conscious  that  posterity  is  looking 
over  their  shoulder  while  they  write. 
With  Stevenson  a  letter  was  not  like  a 
private,  unpremeditated  chat  with  a 
friend,  but  a  set  literary  performance, 
in  which  all  was  premeditated  and 
wrought  with  his  highest  skill  as  a 
literary  artist. 

The  substance  of  Byron's  Letters  is 
often  disappointing,  because  it  belongs 

109 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

to  the  baser  side  of  his  nature,  and  we 
are  irritated  and  grieved  to  find  a  genius 
like  his  seeming  to  prefer  the  lower 
levels.  But  as  human  documents  his 
journals,  and  especially  his  letters,  are 
invaluable.  Moore's  connecting  nar- 
rative, though  in  the  main  good,  is 
not  remarkable.  He  wrote  as  a  prac- 
tised literary  man,  not  as  a  born  bi- 
ographer. His  style  is  smooth  and 
rather  graceful,  but  more  antiquated 
now  than  Boswell's,  and  he  evidently 
suffers  by  contrast  with  the  rush  and 
vividness  and  humor  and  finality  of 
Byron's.  Like  most  of  us  Moore  used 
a  trowel;  Byron  carried  a  poniard. 
We  smile  now  or  moralize  as  we  re- 
member that,  a  century  ago,  some  of 
the  critics  esteemed  Moore  as  superior 
to  Byron,  even  in  poetry;  and  they 
regarded  Byron  as  the  luckiest  of  men 
to  have  Moore  for  a  biographer. 

This    merely    illustrates    the    wide- 
no 


THE  NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

spread  fallacy  which  still  survives 
that  anybody  can  write  a  biography. 
Moore,  being  a  popular  poet,  must 
necessarily  be  a  great  biographer;  but 
they  would  not  have  predicted  that 
he  would  be  the  best  man  to  choose 
to  compose  a  symphony  or  to  paint 
a  portrait.  This  sophism  runs  through  \ 
almost  every  stratum.  Formerly,  when 
any  distinguished  citizen  —  lawyer  or 
judge,  merchant  or  writer  —  died,  it 
was  taken  for  granted  that  his  clergy- 
man, if  he  had  one,  would  write  his 
life,  unless  his  wife,  sister,  or  cousin 
were  preferred  —  a  still  more  foolish 
custom.  I  recall  only  one  biography 
by  a  widow  which  was  really  success- 
ful, Mrs.  Kingsley's  '*Life  of  Charles 
Kingsley."  On  the  other  hand,  I  could 
mention  several  which  were  marred 
because  the  widow  interfered  with  the 
biographer,  or  even  guided  the  pen  while 
the  biographer  wrote.    After  the  family 

III 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

have  found  a  writer  whose  judgment  and 
discretion  they  can  trust,  they  should 
rehgiously  refrain  from  meddhng.  A 
witty  EngHsh  friend  of  mine,  whose 
'Cousin,  Sir  Alfred  Lyall,  was  writing 
the  life  of  Lord  Dufferin,  said  to  me: 
"'I  think  Sir  Alfred  would  agree  with 
you,  that  suttee  should  be  made  com- 
pulsory on  the  widows  of  celebrities/'  / 

The  next  important  biography  in 
English  to  follow  that  of  Byron  was 
Lockhart's  '*Life  of  Scott."  It  added 
no  new  variety  to  the  art,  but  it  is  an 
admirable  example  of  excellence  with- 
out originality.  Lockhart  wrote  well. 
He  avoided  passing  fashions  in  style; 
he  adhered  to  a  chosen  vocabulary  and 
to  a  chosen  scale.  He  felt  emotions 
himself  and  he  could  describe  them  in 
Scott,  and  he  possessed  the  rare  gift 
of  being  simple,  when  the  emotions 
themselves  were  most  intense. 

But  Lockhart's  defect  was  in  draw- 

112 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

ing  his  portrait  on  too  vast  a  scale. 
His  biography  stretches  to  nine  vol- 
umes, some  four  thousand  octavo  pages. 
What  an  elephantine  gift  to  hand  on 
to  poor  Posterity,  our  after-comer,  ♦ 
imaginary  like  Sairey  Gamp's  Mrs. 
Harris,  who  is  to  read  all  the  books 
which  we  leave  unread,  to  crown  with 
laurel  the  innumerable  heads  of  genius 
which  we  neglected,  to  convert,  by 
some  strange  alchemy,  our  mountains 
of  lies  into  truth,  and  to  do  justice  to 
unhonored  reputations ! 

Lockhart  narrates  in  too  great  detail; 
he  lacks  that  power  of  selection  which 
stamps  the  man  of  genius  in  any  art. 
He  quotes  too  copiously  from  Scott's 
letters  and  journals.  Scott,  unlike  By- 
ron, not  being  a  vivacious  and  swift 
letter-writer,  does  not  provide  first- 
rate  biographical  material  in  his  corre- 
spondence. He  is  informational  rather 
than    imaginative    or    temperamental. 

113 


\ 


\ 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

A  wiser  selector  than  Lockhart  would 
have  made  a  separate  work  of  Scott's 
journals  of  travel  —  as  Boswell  pub- 
lished Johnson's  ''Journey  to  the  West- 
ern Isles  of  Scotland."  But,  after  all, 
Scott  was  so  nobly  human  in  nature, 
so  true  in  heart,  so  wholesome,  that  I 
find  it  hard  to  blame  Lockhart  for  tell- 
jng  us  too  much  about  him. 

Selection  !  the  discerning  Greeks  did 
not  make  a  Muse  of  her  because  they 
took  it  for  granted  that  she  was  a  neces- 
sary part  of  every  Muse.  During  the 
past  century  she  has  been  the  most 
neglected  of  all.  Time  was  when  an 
author  or  other  artist  worked  only  un- 
der the  stress  of  a  compelling  inspira- 
tion. But,  among  moderns  authorship 
or  the  other  arts  is  a  trade.  Only 
early  death  can  prevent  a  novelist 
to-day  from  filling  a  ten-foot  book- 
shelf. Our  leading  American  master 
of  fiction  has  eighty  volumes  or  more 

114 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

to  his  credit.  Carlyle,  as  has  been 
well  said,  preached  the  fatuity  of  speech 
and  the  excellence  of  silence  in  twenty 
large  volumes.  Balzac  left  three  times 
that  number,  and  the  prolific  Alexandre 
Dumas,  pere^  has  been  explained  as  a 
syndicate  and  not  as  an  individual. 
Victor  Hugo  —  but  why  go  on  .^  The 
multi-vocal  H.  G.  Wells  gets  out  three 
books  a  year;  much  must  be  allowed, 
however,  to  the  pioneer  who,  as  early 
as  191 8,  amazed  the  world  by  discov- 
ering God;  and,  since  Mr.  Wells  has  a 
remarkable  business  sense,  we  may  be 
sure  that  he  took  out  a  patent  on  his 
discovery. 

Does  not  this  volubility  imply,  as  I 
just  said,  that  writing  no  longer  waits 
on  inspiration  .r*  Your  successful  nov- 
elist turns  out  his  two  thousand  or  two 
thousand  five  hundred  words  a  day, 
as  regularly  and  with  as  little  wear 
and  tear  on  his  brain  as  your  popular 

115 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

baker  achieves  his  daily  stint  of  mix- 
ing, cutting,  and  frying  a  thousand 
doughnuts.  Writing  and  baking  have 
become  trades.  This  result  is  con- 
firmed by  biographers  also;  for,  as  I 
have  remarked,  modern  biography  has 
been  noticeably  affected  by  fiction. 
In  England  financial  motives  have  also 
caused  biographies,  as  well  as  novels, 
to  swell  in  bulk.  For  a  long  time  three 
volumes  was  the  accepted  limit  of  a 
novel,  that  limit  being  fixed  by  the 
willingness  of  a  sufficient  number  of 
buyers  to  pay  a  guinea  for  a  three- 
volume  novel.  Latterly,  when  four 
or  Rvt  shillings,  or  seven  and  six,  mark 
the  price  which  the  greatest  number  of 
readers  will  pay  for  their  fiction,  the 
text  is  correspondingly  shortened.  For 
a  long  time  past  a  guinea  has  been  the 
traditional  sum  to  be  paid  for  a  bi- 
ography, and,  as  no  publisher  could 
give,  without  blushing,  less  than  two 

ii6 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

volumes  of  paper,  binding,  and  press- 
work  for  that  figure,  biographies  have 
been  written  to  fill  two  volumes. 
Hence  the  appalling  list  of  two-volume 
lives  of  British  statesmen  and  ecclesi- 
astics, irrespective  of  the  fact  that 
many  of  them  could  be  adequately  em- 
balmed in  a  hundred  pages,  whereas 
a  few  of  the  others  might  deserve  a 
thousand  pages.  The  standard  of  bi- 
ography is  set  by  fashion  and  the  pub- 
lishers at  two  volumes,  but  Mr.  Glad- 
stone and  some  bishops  and  archbishops 
be  so  strong  that  they  come  to  three 
volumes. 

What  becomes  of  the  artist  —  and, 
as  I  have  so  often  insisted,  the  biog- 
rapher must  be  an  artist  —  if  he  is 
forced,  for  the  pecuniary  profit  of  his 
publisher,  to  ignore  his  art  and  to  in- 
flate three  or  four  signatures  of  text 
into  a  thousand  pages.?  Even  biog- 
raphers who  are  above  sacrificing  any 

117 


\ 

■4 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

ideal  for  commercial  reasons,  often 
fail  because  they  have  neither  the  re- 
quirements of  art  nor  any  training. 
Mrs.  Charles  Kingsley,  for  example, 
wrote  her  life  of  her  husband  in  two 
volumes,  but  she  subsequently  re- 
duced it  to  one,  and  the  improvement 
must  be  evident  to  every  reader. 

In  judging  novelists  and  biographers, 
therefore,  we  must  understand  what 
size  convention  prescribed  for  their 
works.  Suppose  that  a  sculptor  had 
to  make  his  statues,  irrespective  of  their 
subjects,  of  the  same  dimensions,  be- 
cause he  could  procure  packing-boxes 
of  only  one  size  to  ship  them  in,  what 
'would  become  of  the  art  of  sculpture  ? 
The  true  biographer,  however,  writes 
neither  to  fill  out  nor  to  curtail,  but  to 
present  his  subject  in  just  proportion. 

The  reaction  of  fiction  on  biography 
conduced  to  improve  the  substance 
of  biographical  writing,  by  forcing  it 

ii8 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

to  be  more  vivid,  more  lifelike.  Read- 
ers who  found  the  phantoms  which  the 
imagination  of  Thackeray  and  Dickens 
and  George  Eliot  created  as  lifelike  as 
themselves,  would  not  tolerate  the  bi- 
ographies in  which  real  persons  were 
more  unsubstantial  than  phantoms. 
Why,  they  ask,  should  Colonel  New- 
come  and  Becky  Sharpe,  David  Cop- 
perfield  and  Lady  Dedlock,  Tito  Me- 
lema  and  Maggie  Tulliver,  or  George 
Meredith's  Richard  Feverel  and  Sir 
Willoughby  Patterne,  live  and  breathe, 
and  be  as  actually  our  companions  as 
are  our  most  intimate  friends,  while  the 
lay  figures  whom  biographers  set  up  and 
call  by  the  names  of  historic  persons 
are  as  dead  as  mummies,  or  even  as 
fossils  ?  Insensibly,  therefore,  fiction 
set  an  example  in  vitality  to  the  bi- 
ographers. 

Further,  from  the  middle  of  the  Nine- 
teenth Century  on.  Science  began  visibly 

119 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

to  affect  both  these  arts.  For  Science 
studied  an  animal,  a  flower,  a  tree,  dis- 
passionately and  with  the  utmost  thor- 
oughness. Science  used  a  microscope, 
and  the  public,  becoming  gradually  ac- 
customed to  the  way  in  which  Science 
described  its  specimens,  instinctively 
looked  for  a  similar  method  when  bi- 
ographers and  novelists  portrayed  their 
subjects.  In  the  end  the  scientific 
method,  applied  to  the  arts,  defeated 
its  purpose  by  substituting  material 
and  mechanical  standards  for  spiritual. 
Science  can  vivisect  bodies,  but  up  to 
the  present  the  soul  of  man  eludes  the 
microscope  and  the  scalpel.  The  es- 
sential subject  of  the  biographer  is  the 
soul  of  man. 

I  do  not  like  to  fix  dates  because,  in 
the  transition  between  one  social  or 
intellectual  or  religious  season  and 
another,  there  is  the  same  elasticity  as 
in  the  passage  from  spring  to  summer, 

1 20 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

or  from  autumn  to  winter.  You  can- 
not say  absolutely  that  any  day  marked 
the  line  of  division.  The  year  1859, 
which  saw  the  publication  of  Darwin's 
''Origin  of  Species,"  stands  out  in  the 
retrospect  as  the  beginning  of  the  new 
epoch  and  the  end  of  the  old;  but  we 
perceive  now  that  for  several  years  be- 
fore 1859  the  new  ideas  were  in  the 
air  (to  use  a  vague  term  of  that  time) 
and  that  for  a  decade  or  more  after 
1859  the  old  ideas  survived,  even  if 
they  did  not  prevail.  In  Biography,  I 
think,  the  most  characteristic  speci- 
mens of  the  changing  ideals  as  to  sub- 
stance and  method  appeared  in  John 
Morley's  studies  of  Voltaire  and  of 
Rousseau.  Nothing  better  of  its  kind 
exists  in  English  so  far  as  I  know. 
Morley  does  not  attempt  to  write  a 
consecutive  story  of  the  events  which 
made  up  the  external  life  of  either 
man.     He  gives   us,  rather,  a  survey 

121 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

of  the  intellectual  and  moral  develop- 
ment of  each,  and,  as  any  of  us  can 
verify  by  looking  over  his  own  ex- 
perience, this  development  does  not 
coincide  with  external  happenings.  It 
was  the  discovery  of  Wordsworth's 
poems  which  revolutionized  John 
Stuart  Mill's  inner  life,  and  so  almost 
every  important  man  acknowledges 
that  he  got  a  great  impetus  or  perma- 
nent spiritual  direction  from  some 
book  or  person. 

Morley  works  by  what  I  may  call 
the  oblique  method  in  biography.  He 
seems  to  be  more  bent  on  criticising 
than  describing,  but  when  his  portrait 
is  complete  you  recognize  its  lifelike- 
ness.  If  you  watched  Monet  paint, 
you  would  wonder  why  he  splashed  on 
one  stroke  or  another,  but  when  you 
viewed  his  finished  picture  at  the  proper 
distance  you  would  see  that  every  drop 
of  paint  had  its  purpose,  and  that  not 

122 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

a  stroke  was  superfluous.  Similarly, 
Morley,  who  was  by  no  means  an  Im- 
pressionist, and  never  splashes  on  his 
colors,  achieves  the  portrait  which  he 
meant  to  paint. 

His  evolution  as  a  biographer  was  so 
remarkable  that  we  might  well  devote 
an  entire  lecture  to  it.  From  those 
two  early  monographs  of  Voltaire  and 
Rousseau  he  passed  on  to  not  less 
searching,  though  less  considerable, 
studies  of  Diderot  and  other  French- 
men, and  of  Edmund  Burke.  This 
last  seems  to  me  to  be  the  finest  sketch 
in  English  of  a  political  philosopher. 
But  Mr.  Morley  went  on,  and  in  his 
"Life  of  Oliver  Cromwell"  he  chose  the 
dramatic;  rather  than  the  philosophical 
method,  and  in  his  "Gladstone"  he 
combined  both  kinds  in  a  work  which 
some  persons  regard  as  a  salient  mas- 
terpiece in  recent  biography.  Per- 
haps it  is  hardly  that;  it  is  packed  with 

123 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

information  much  of  which  Morley 
only  could  give,  but  does  it  not  belong 
to  the  encyclopedic  works  like  Nicolay 
and  Hay's  "Abraham  Lincoln,"  rather 
than  to  the  really  biographical  works 
of  which  BoswelFs  "Johnson"  is  the 
model?  In  his  "Life  of  Cobden" 
Morley  again  presents  to  us  the  ebb 
and  flow  of  great  political  and  economic 
forces,  with  their  frequent  clash,  rather 
than  the  intimate  biography  of  the 
Free  Trade  champion.  But  this,  too, 
is  legitimate,  and  indeed  in  the  life  of 
any  statesman  the  problem  of  his  bi- 
ographer is  to  reach  a  balance  between 
history  and  biography,  between  the 
person  and  the  cause.  Nor  should  we 
overlook  Morley's  '*  Sir  Robert  Wal- 
pole,"  in  which  he  rescues  from  gener- 
ations of  odium  the  reputation  of  a 
statesman  who  really  deserved  an 
honorable  fame. 

The  wonderful  Greeks  who  visualized 

124 


THE   NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

in  permanent  and  vital  symbols  even 
their  deepest  thoughts,  pictured  Time, 
Chronos,  as  devouring  his  children. 
His  appetite  is  as  insatiable  now  as 
ever.  Just  as  we  have  come  to  regard 
one  fashion  as  enduring,  he  creates 
another  to  take  its  place.  Thomas 
Carlyle  thundered  his  depreciatory  doc- 
trines on  eighteenth-century  France 
until  he  had  made  the  world  listen  to 
him  and  believe;  and  then,  while  his 
echoes  still  went  reverberating,  John 
Morley  came  and  taught  us,  in  tones 
far  less  vehement,  to  see  the  good  in 
the  France  which  Carlyle  had  weighed 
and  found  wanting.  Morley's  account 
of  Voltaire,  if  you  seek  to  know  what 
Voltaire  actually  was  in  Time,  will  give 
you  the  necessary  information.  But 
for  Carlyle  Time  was  always  merely  a 
film,  stretching  in  front  of  Eternity, 
neither  wholly  transparent  nor  wholly 
opaque.     So   Carlyle's   judgments   are 

I2S 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

not  those  of  a  decade  or  a  fashion,  but 
those  which  conform  to  the  Eternal 
Laws,  as  he  saw  them.  And  Voltaire, 
or  Rousseau,  or  Mirabeau,  have  a  very 
different  appearance  to  the  intellect 
busied  primarily  with  things  temporal, 
from  what  they  have  when  they  are 
thrown  on  the  screen  of  things  spiritual 
and  eternal. 

During  nearly  forty  years  I  have 
passed  through  several  phases  in  my 
estimate  of  Thomas  Carlyle.  He  made 
me  a  Hero-Worshipper  and  a  Hater  of 
Shams;  he  held  me  spell-bound  by  his 
humor  and  by  the  magnificence  of 
many  of  his  pages;  he  disclosed  to  me 
Reality  more  real  than  I  had  found  in 
any  other  writer;  he  spoke  to  me  with 
an  austerity  strangely  fascinating,  and 
in  language  as  rhythmic  as  the  long, 
everlasting  roll  of  the  sea,  messages 
that  might  have  come  from  a  Hebrew 
prophet. 

126 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

Then  followed  a  period,  not  entirely 
of  disillusion,  but  of  criticism  and  of 
slackened  admiration.  I  perceived  his 
mannerisms  both  in  diction  and  in 
method.  If  Nature  has  mannerisms 
she  disguises  them.  Although  she 
brings  us  a  hundred  storms  in  a  year, 
each  seems  original  and  not  an  imita- 
tion of  any  which  went  before.  I  fell 
to  doubting  Carlyle's  Eternal  Verities, 
and  I  asked  myself  whether  a  man  who 
did  not  discern  a  living  hero  in  two  of 
his  contemporaries,  like  Lincoln  and 
Cavour,  could  be  trusted  to  discover 
dead  heroes  in  times  long  past,  and  to 
measure  them  truly.  Having  lived 
through,  if  not  outgrown,  the  Age  of 
Wonder,  I  hungered  for  hard,  concrete 
facts,  for  Ideals  which  could  be  demon- 
strated, for  the  logic  and  continuity 
which  Science  affords  us. 

Then  I  entered  a  third  phase,  in 
which  I  saw  again  Carlyle  as  an  aniaz- 

127 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

ing  genius  —  Carlyle,  who  flashed  into 
the  very  heart  and  soul  of  men  and 
women;  Carlyle,  who  had  a  special  gift 
for  seeing  through  many  parts  of  the 
film  of  Time  which  were  opaque  to 
most  of  us;  Carlyle,  who  beyond  all 
other  historians  mderstood  the  terror 
of  Life  and  its  inexorable  doom,  in 
which  each  of  us  has  a  stake.  I  de- 
lighted afresh  in  his  incomparable  hu- 
mor. Who  can  compare  with  him  in 
seizing  upon  the  small,  homely,  cosey 
things  ?  How  he  pounces  on  an  ap- 
parent trifle,  which,  properly  estimated, 
was  the  pivot  on  which  history  turned, 
—  such,  for  instance,  as  old  Dragoon 
Drouet,  who,  having  caught  a  glimpse 
of  Louis  XVI  and  Marie  Antoinette 
taking  flight  in  their  berline  toward 
the  French  border,  strides  over  the 
fields  by  a  short  cut  to  Varennes,  inter- 
cepts them  there,  causes  their  arrest, 
and    so   turns    awry    the    catastrophe 

128 


THE   NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

of  the  French  Revolution.  I  doubt 
whether  any  other  biographer  or  his- 
torian has  ever  equalled  Carlyle  in  his 
genius  for  discerning  the  smallest  de- 
tail in  externals  and  in  sweeping,  as  on 
a  Seraph's  wing,  over  vast  generaliza- 
tions on  the  inmost  meaning  of  Life. 

As  a  biographer  Carlyle  is  very  un- 
even. Having  decided  that  Frederick 
the  Great  was  a  hero  before  he  under- 
took to  write  about  him,  he  could  never 
look  straight  at  the  man  except  when 
he  had  magnifying  or  distorting  glasses 
on.  The  result  is  that  Carlyle,  the 
most  insistent  of  all  historians  on  the 
moral  interpretation  of  history,  makes 
of  Frederick  the  Great,  who  was  really 
a  monarch  without  moral  sense  in 
public  affairs  and  the  corrupter  of  the 
German  people,  a  hero  and  model. 
No  wonder  that  Carlyle,  blinded  by 
this  false  simulation  of  greatness,  should 
not  recognize  true  greatness  in  George 

129 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

Washington  but  should  sneer  at  him. 
Granted,    however,    that    Frederick's 
portrait  was  to  be  painted  as  Carlyle 
saw  him,  what  other  historian  could 
equal   the   variety,    the    humor,    with 
which   Carlyle   painted   it  ?     For  life- 
likeness  it  could  not  be  excelled,  and 
yet  it  lacks   symmetry,   compactness, 
and  the  supreme  quality  of  finality  and 
beauty.     If  Carlyle  only  had  had  more 
I  of   the    Greek    in    his    make-up !     If 
I  he  had  only  taken  the  Greek   motto 
i  —  Mrjdep  dyav  —  nothing    too   much  — 
j  which  every  artist  should  carry  stamped 
1  on  his   heart !     But   he   was   a   Goth, 
and  the  Gothic  genius  riots  in  digres- 
\  sions    and    superfluities.     He    reminds 
me  of  Rembrandt  among  the  painters, 
who  gets  so  many  of  his  effects  from 
shadows   and    darkness.     The    figures 
in  Carlyle's  historic  dramas  seem,  like 
Rembrandt's  portraits,  to  emerge  out 
of  blackest  night  into  life  and  color 

130 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

before   they   sink   back   into   blackest 
night  again. 

"We  are  no  other  than  a  moving  row 
Of  magic  shadow-shapes  that  come  and  go 
Round  with  this  sun-illumin'd  lantern  held 
In  midnight  by  the  Master  of  the  Show." 

Carlyle's  "Oliver  Cromwell"  is  an- 
other masterpiece  of  interpretation. 
In  it  he  exalts  another  great  man  who, 
it  happened,  was  worthy  of  exaltation. 
Perhaps  it  is  fanciful  to  suggest  that 
to  understand  this  book  we  must  re- 
member that  it  was  written  ten  years 
after  "The  French  Revolution"  —  the 
most  astonishing  prose  epic  in  the  lan- 
guage. In  his  study  of  the  upheaval 
in  France  Carlyle  saw  that  anarchy 
and  ruin  must  result  from  such  an 
upheaval  unless  there  were  a  truly 
strong  and  wise  man  to  lead  it.  Oliver 
Cromwell,  who  dominated  the  English 
Revolution  and  was  swayed  by  the 
deepest  religious  principles  (fanaticism., 

131 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

his  enemies  would  say),  was  a  strong 
man  and  worthy  of  being  revered.  If, 
on  the  other  hand,  you  turn  to  the 
"Life  of  Schiller,"  written  earlier,  be- 
fore his  passion  for  interpretation  hur- 
ried Carlyle  before  it,  you  will  discover 
rather  a  conventional  specimen  of  bi- 
ography in  the  first  third  of  the  Nine- 
teenth Century.  His  "Life  of  John 
Sterling,"  however,  is  one  of  the  sweet- 
est revelations  of  a  fine,  manly  charac- 
ter which  one  friend  ever  made  of  an- 
other; although,  viewed  from  the  ideals 
of  Art,  it  has  its  excrescences  and  ex- 
cesses. 

The  Italians  have  a  proverb  which 
sums  up  the  common  opinion  of  au- 
thors toward  translators:  '^  Traduttore^ 
traditoreJ'  The  play  on  the  Italian 
words  cannot  be  reproduced  in  Eng- 
lish, but  the  meaning  can  be:  "Trans- 
lator, traitor  or  betrayer."  I  feel  that 
in  too  many  cases  this  motto  would 

132 


THE   NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

apply  also  to  biographers,  and  to  no 
one  more  conspicuously  than  to  James 
Anthony  Froude.  I  once  asked 
Charles  Eliot  Norton,  who  knew  both 
men,  how  Carlyle  came  to  designate 
Froude  as  his  biographer,  and  Mr. 
Norton  replied  by  quoting  Landor's 
sadly  cynical  epigram: 

"The  wisest  of  the  wise 

Listen  to  pretty  Hes, 
And  love  to  hear  them  told. 
Doubt  not  that  Solomon 
Listened  to  many  a  one. 
Some  in  his  youth  and  more  when  he  grew 
old." 

Froude,  who  was  younger  than  Car- 
lyle by  more  than  twenty  years, 
had  been  one  of  his  earliest  and 
stanchest  devotees,  and  as  Carlyle 
sank  into  old  age  Froude  attended  him 
assiduously,  and,  it  is  not  unkind  to 
infer,  suggested  that  he  be  made  the 
great  man's  literary  executor  and  bi- 
ographer.    We  can  see  how,  under  the 

133 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

circumstances,  Carlyle  should  be  grati- 
fied to  know  that  a  disciple  who  gave 
him  back  his  own  opinions  should  have 
charge  of  this  important  service.  But 
see  how  tragic  the  results  were  ! 

Thomas  Carlyle,  in  many  respects, 
filled  for  the  English-speaking  world 
during  fifty  years  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century,  a  place  similar  to  that  filled 
in  the  Eighteenth  Century  by  Samuel 
Johnson.  Through  the  good  fortune 
of  having  James  Boswell  for  his  biog- 
rapher, Johnson  lives  as  the  most  in- 
teresting, if  not  as  the  most  beloved, 
figure  of  his  age;  whereas  Carlyle, 
after  the  publication  of  his  life  by 
Froude,  suffered  a  personal  eclipse  from 
which  he  has  not  yet  emerged.  This 
is  not  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  fashion 
in  writing  History  has  changed,  that 
Science  has  discredited  Romanticism, 
that  liberal  and  even  radical  ideas 
have  swamped  Carlyle's  conservatism 

134 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


Johnson's   Toryism   also   had   gone 


out  of  fashion  before  he  died,  but  that 
did  not  lessen  the  interest  men  took 
in  his  personaHty:  Carlyle's  wounded 
name  with  posterity  was  owing  to 
Froude's  betrayal. 

I  do  not  imply  that  Froude  inten- 
tionally traduced  Carlyle,  his  natural 
purpose  being,  of  course,  to  magnify 
his  hero;  but  as  a  biographer  he  was 
both  false  and  inartistic.  He  was  ^ 
false  because  he  used  the  material 
which  he  found  in  Carlyle's  letters  and 
diaries  to  scourge  persons  whom  he 
himself  hated;  he  was  inartistic  be- 
cause by  putting  the  wrong  emphasis 
on  Carlyle's  conduct  he  gave  the  world 
a  wrong  impression  of  the  total  man. 
To  pick  out  a  temporary  state  of 
mind,  a  fleeting  irritation,  a  unique 
rudeness,  a  whim  or  foible,  harmless 
and  even  amusing  if  described  prop- 
erly, and  to  present  these  as  if  they 

135 


N 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

were  habitual,  the  very  bone  and 
sinew  of  the  man's  character,  was 
bad  art.  That  kindest  of  critics  and 
sweetest-natured  of  friends,  Horace 
Furness,  told  me  that  he  never  wanted 
to  hear  of  Carlyle  again  after  he  read 
in  Fronde's  "Life"  that  he  had  allowed 
his  wife  to  scrub  the  bricks  in  the  little 
back  yard  of  Number  5,  Cheyne  Row. 
"Miserable  creature!"  said  Mr.  Fur- 
ness, "he  ought  to  have  gone  down  on 
his  knees  and  scrubbed  them  himself!" 
Now,  if  it  was  necessary  to  record 
that  incident  at  all  Froude  might  have 
done  it  in  such  a  way  as  to  show  its 
proper  relation  with  the  rest  of  Car- 
lyle's  life,  instead  of  making  it  appear 
an  ungallant  and  almost  brutal  fact 
which  must  spring  from  the  man's 
whole  character.  Few  can  be  the 
households  in  which  there  are  not  oc- 
currences which,  if  ripped  out  of  their 
proper  perspective,  would  not  expose 

136 


THE  NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

husbands  and  wives  to  very  harsh  and 
totally  unjustified  inferences. 

This  is  merely  one  example  out  of 
hundreds  in  Froude's  "Biography" 
which  illustrate  the  harm  biographers 
may  do  by  improper  emphasis,  unless 
each  event  is  so  framed  that  the  reader 
can  judge  it  truly,  as  he  would  do  if  he 
could  have  seen  it  himself.  He  either 
sins  wilfully  or  is  incompetent.  In 
Froude's  case  we  are  forced  to  conclude 
that  he  sinned  deliberately,  in  order  to 
gratify  his  own  spite  or  to  push  his 
own  opinions.  How  otherwise  shall 
we  explain  the  multitude  of  verbal 
changes  from  Carlyle's  manuscript  to 
Froude's  printed  version  —  changes  in 
some  of  which  the  neutral  or  kindly 
epithets  of  the  original  became  abusive 
or  malignant  ^  How  otherwise  shall  we 
explain  that  the  slip  of  paper  on  which 
Carlyle  prohibited  the  publication  of 
one    of    the    volumes    of    "Reminis- 

137 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 


ences*'  disappeared,  and  that  Froude 
discovered  it  only  after  the  volume 
was  printed,  and  Carlyle's  niece  insis- 
tently demanded  it  ?  I  cite  Froude  as 
the  great  warning  to  biographers.  He 
not  only  committed  a  crime  against 
the  hero  he  wished  to  glorify,  but  I 
fear  that  he  so  damaged  Carlyle's  repu- 
tation that  it  can  be  restored  only  when 
some  true  man,  equipped  with  honesty, 
artistic  sense,  and  adequate  biograph- 
ical talent  shall  write  a  life  of  him. 

How  different  the  fortune  of  Mac- 
aulay,  Carlyle's  chief  contemporary 
master  in  the  writing  of  History  !  His 
"Life,"  by  his  nephew.  Sir  George  Otto 
Trevelyan,  seems  to  me  second  only 
to  Boswell's  "Johnson."  Trevelyan 
wrote  on  a  different  plan  from  Bos- 
well's,  but  he  achieved  what  he  in- 
tended not  less  remarkably  than  did 
Boswell.  In  this  work  you  have  a 
perfect  interweaving  of  biography  and 

138 


THE  NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

history,  balance,  discretion,  a  rare 
skill  in  summarizing,  ample  quotation 
from  letters  and  journals,  but  not  too 
ample,  and  a  sufficiently  intimate  por- 
trayal of  Macaulay  as  public  man,  and 
especially  as  son,  brother,  uncle,  and 
friend.  The  doctrinaires,  who  sup- 
posed thirty  years  ago  that  they  had 
killed  Macaulay,  are  themselves  dead, 
but  he  lives  on,  and  it  seems  quite  un- 
likely that  the  English-speaking  race 
will  soon  if  ever  throw  over  into  obliv- 
ion this  spokesman  of  some  of  its 
mightiest  characteristics.  As  long  as 
Macaulay  is  read  Trevelyan's  "Life'* 
of  him  also  will  be  read,  and  it  will 
serve  as  a  pattern  for  countless  future 
biographers. 

Remember  that  one-half — I  might 
almost  say  four-fifths  —  of  a  biogra- 
phy depends  on  the  biographer. 
The  charm  of  the  *'  Life  of  Alice  Free- 
man  Palmer"   springs   from   the   fact 

139 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

that  her  husband,  Professor  George  H. 
Palmer,  wrote  it.  He  saw  her  as  a 
beautiful  ideal,  and  had  the  art  and 
imagination  and  glow  to  make  us  all 
see  her  as  he  did.  On  the  other  hand, 
Justin  Winsor,  in  his  biography  of 
Columbus,  falls  short,  because  he  de- 
votes too  much  time  to  the  low  quali- 
ties and  misdemeanors  of  Columbus. 
Now,  Columbus  was  created  to  discover 
America,  and  not  to  be  a  pattern  like 
St.  Francis  of  Assisi,  or  some  of  the 
Pilgrim  Fathers,  of  the  highest  Chris- 
tian virtues.  In  like  fashion,  it  seems 
to  me,  the  Reverend  A.  V.  G.  Allen's 
portrait  of  Phillips  Brooks  is  out  of 
drawing,  because  he  emphasizes  too 
much  matters  which  interested  Allen 
as  a  Theologian  more  than  they  did 
Brooks  as  an  Evangelist  whose  mission 
it  was  to  speak  at  all  times  and  at  all 
places,  with  wonderful  persuasion,  the 
message  of  God. 

140 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

I  shall  not  attempt  to  discuss,  even 
briefly,  the  later  biographies  in  Eng- 
lish. I  have  already  mentioned  Mor- 
ley's  "Life  of  Gladstone''  and  Winston 
Churchill's  "Life"  of  his  father.  Lord 
Randolph.  The  latter  would  be  twice 
as  good  if  it  were  half  as  long,  for 
Churchill  errs,  as  most  Englishmen  do, 
in  attaching  an  exaggerated  importance 
to  partisan  political  details.  After  all, 
Sir  Staff'ord  Northcote,  Goschen,  Lord 
Hartington,  and  even  Lord  Salisbury 
are  not  personages  of  heroic  size  or  gi- 
gantic importance  when  viewed  through 
the  perspective  of  thirty  years,  and 
Mr.  Churchill  describes  them  so  mi- 
nutely that  I  at  least  find  it  difficult 
to  trace  in  his  description  the  trunk- 
line  of  their  policy.  (^ 

Hallam  Tennyson's  "Life"  of  his 
father  would  confirm  those  who  hold 
that  the  widow  or  son  of  a  celebrity 
ought    never    to    be    his    biographer-^ 

141 


L 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

J 

jOn  the  other  hand,  Francis  Darwin 
and  Leonard  Huxley  both  produced 
satisfactory  biographies  of  their  fa- 
thers. 

I  have  not  considered  French, 
Italian,  and  German  biographical 
works,  partly  because  I  am  not  fa- 
miliar with  enough  of  them  to  draw 
any  general  conclusions.  A  whole  li- 
brary has  been  written  about  Napo- 
leon, but  so  far  as  I  know  nobody  has 
yet  achieved  a  transcendent  biography 
of  him.  The  same  is  true  of  Bismarck, 
and  the  Hkelihood  seems  slight  that  he 
will  ever  be  put  into  a  book  to  be  read 
throughout  the  world.  For  German 
biographers  are  so  absorbed  in  the 
shoe-buckles  and  laundry  bills  of  their 
heroes  —  witness  Diintzer's  "Goethe'* 
and  "Schiller"  —  that  they  are  unable 
to  get  inside  of  the  man,  or  even  to 
stand  upright  and  look  at  him  eye  to 

142 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

eye.     They  have  too  much  the  posture 
of  lackeys  and  valets. 

In  French,  Paul  Sabatier's  "Life  of 
St.  Francis"  illustrates  how,  through 
sympathy,  the  right  biographer  can 
almost  persuade  his  readers  that  a 
character  who  comes  to  them  through 
a  golden  mist  of  miracles  is  real.  More 
recently  Valery-Radot  has  depicted 
the  great  man  of  science,  Louis  Pasteur, 
so  nobly  that  he  seems  as  worthy  of 
wearing  a  halo  as  did  any  medieval 
saint.  In  one  branch  of  biography 
the  French  have  excelled,  and  that  is 
in  critical  and  analytical  lives  of  public 
men.  Whoever  reads  the  monographs 
on  Cavour  and  on  Metternich,  by 
Charles  de  Mazade,  will  see  excellent 
specimens  of  this  genre^  which  has 
thriven  too  little  among  us  because  our 
historical  students  were  long  intimi- 
dated by  the  German  professors,  who 

143 


THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY 

Ijsneered  at  any  work  in  which  foot-notes 
and  references  did  not  outmeasure  the 
text.  But  this  despotism  by  pedants 
is,  we  may  hope,  at  an  end. 

And  so,  after  our  long  survey,  we 
bring  the  Art  of  Biography  down  to 
the  present,  when  multipHcity  seems 
to  be  its  foremost  trait.     We  under- 
stand that  any  man  who  is  interesting 
may  be  a  proper  subject  for  a  biog- 
grapher;    king,  dukes,  and  the  upper 
classes  must  now  have  more  than  their 
title  and  position  in  order  to  attract 
us.     We  recognize,  also,  that  each  per- 
son, like  the  sitter  for  a  painter,  re- 
quires to  be  drawn  in  the  attitude  and 
atmosphere  which  will  most  fitly  re- 
A    veal  him.     I  regard  sympathy  as  an 
T  indispensable  qualification  in  the  biog- 
/     rapher,  although  a  good  many  persons 
1   still  believe  that  devil's  advocates  are 
\more  likely  to  tell  the  truth.     The  sym- 


y 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


/ 


pathy  which  I  mean,  however,  does  not 

/     degenerate    into    unrestrained    eulogy, 

but   interp.rets_the    defects,   blunders, 

and  even  the  sins  of  its  subject,  in  their 

\true  relations.     The  aim  of  the  biog^/— 
grapher  should  be   Totality,  which,  if  i 
achieved,  coincides  with  Michael  An- 
gelo's   definition  of  Beauty:    **I1    Piu 
neir  Uno" — The  whole  in  one,  or  the       ■ 
universal  in  the  particular.  ' 

*'To  see  a  world  in  a  grain  of  sand, 

And  a  heaven  in  a  wild  flower;  ' 

I 

Hold  infinity  in  the  palm  of  your  hand, 
And  eternity  in  an  hour."  / 

So  I  leave  Biography  on  the  thresh-       j 
old  of  what  may  be  a   Golden   Age. 
Its  outlook  was   never  brighter.     Its       ' 
votaries  will   practise   it   with  a  con- 
stantly increasing  skill.     The  demand 
for    veracity    will    not    slacken.     The       i 
public,  grown  more  discerning,  will  read 
it  with  greater  relish.     And   I   think 
that  we  may  predict  that  the  general       I 

145 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

average  of  biographical  writing  will  be 
higher  than  it  has  been,  though  the 
number  of  master  biographers  like  that 
of  master  portrait-painters  can  never 
be  large,  hardly  more  than  two  or 
three  in  a  century. 

The  fact  that  the  persons  and  events 
the  biographer  depicts  were  real  will 
lend  to  them  an  additional  attractive- 
ness. 

Given  life,  the  first  impulse  of  life  — 
the   incessant,   triumphant   impulse  — 


is    to    manifest    itself   in    individuals. 

\From  the  beginning  there  has  never 
been  a  moment,  or  the  fraction  of  a 
second,  when  the  universe  or  the  tiniest 
part  of  it,  became  abstract.  In  the 
world  of  matter  not  less  than  in  the 
organic  world  of  animals  and  plants, 

\  always  and  everywhere  and  forever  — 
individuals !  From  atom  to  Sirius, 
nothing  but  individuals  !  Even  in  the 
protean    transmutation   of  one    thing 

146 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

into  another,  of  life  into  death,  and 
death  into  Hfe,  individuahty  keeps 
pace  with  each  changing  stage. 

Since  the  process  of  individualiza- 
tion is  from  lower  to  higher,  from  sim- 
ple to  complex,  the  acknowledged  great 
men  in  history,  or  the  persons  who 
stand  out  from  any  mass,  are  endowed 
with  unusual  qualities,  or  with  com- 
mon qualities  in  an  uncommon  degree 
—  an  endowment  which  gives  them 
more  points  of  contact,  more  power, 
more  interest,  more  charm.  These  are 
the  men  and  women  whom  biography  |\ 
perpetuates.  The  master  creations  of 
fiction  spring  from  the  human  brain; 
the  subjects  of  biography  are  the  very 
creations  of  God  himself;  the  realities 
of  God  must  forever  transcend  the 
fictions  of  man. 


/ 


147 


A  SHORT  LIST  OF   BOOKS 

I  have  been  asked  to  furnish  a  short  list  of  the 
books  referred  to  in  these  Essays.  The  titles  I  have 
set  down  are  either  those  of  the  editions  which  I 
myself  have  used  or  which  the  reader  will  probably 
find  the  most  convenient  to  procure.  I  make  no 
attempt  to  compile  a  complete  bibliography. 

W.  R.  T. 

Ahelard  and  Heloise,  Love  Letters  of.     (London :  Dent, 

1901.     Temple  Classics.) 
Agricoldy  Life  of.     Tacitus,  translated  by  Church 

and  Brodribb.     (London:  Macmillan,  1877.) 
Apollonius  of  Tyandy  Life  of.     By  Philostratus;  Eng- 
lish  translation   by   F.   C.  Conybeare.     (New 

York:  Macmillan,  191 2.     2  vols.) 
Brooks,  Phillips.     Life  and  Letters.     By  A.  V.  G. 

Allen.     (New  York:  Dutton,  1901.    2  vols.) 
Burke.     By  John  Morley.     (London  and  New  York: 

Macmillan,  1901.) 
Byron,  Letters  and  Journals  of  Lord;  with  Notices  of 

His  Life.     By  Thomas  Moore.     (Paris:  1833. 

2  vols.) 

149 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

Byroriy  Works  :  Poetry.  7  vols.  Letters  and  Jour- 
nals. 6  vols.  (London:  Murray;  Scribner, 
1898-1904.     13  vols.) 

Ccesarsy  Lives  of  Twelve.  By  Suetonius;  translated 
by  J.  C.  Rolfe.  (New  York:  Putnam's,  1914. 
Loeb  Classical  Library.) 

Carlyley  Thomas.  History  of  First  Forty  Years  of 
Carlyle's  Life.  By  J.  A.  Froude.  (London: 
Chapman  and  Hall;  New  York:  Charles  Scrib- 
ner's  Sons,  1882.     2  vols.) 

Carlyle,  Thomas.  History  of  Carlyle's  Life  in  Lon- 
don. By  J.  A.  Froude.  (London:  Chapman 
and  Hall;  New  York:  Charles  Scribner's  Sons, 
1884.     2  vols.) 

Cavoury  Comte  de.  By  Charles  de  Mazade.  (Paris: 
Plon,  1877.) 

Cellini,  Benvenuto,  Life  of.  Translated  by  J.  A. 
Symonds.  (London:  Nimmo,  1883.)  Also 
translated  by  Anne  Macdonnel.  (London: 
Dent,  1903.) 

Charlemagne,  Einhard's  Life  of.  English  transla- 
tion.    (Oxford:  Clarendon  Press,  1915.) 

Churchill,  Lord  Randolph,  Life  of.  By  Winston 
Churchill.    (London:  Macmillan,  1906.    2  vols.) 

\i  Clarendon,  Edward  Hyde,  First  Earl  of.  Characters 
and  Episodes  of  the  Great  Rebellion.  Edited  by 
G.  D.  Boyle.     (Oxford:  1889.) 

Cohden,  Richard,  Life  of.  By  John  Morley.  (Bos- 
ton: Roberts  Bros.,  1890.) 

150 


A  SHORT  LIST  OF   BOOKS 

Columbus,  Christopher.  By  Justin  Winsor.  (Bos- 
ton: Houghton  Mifflin  Co.,  1901.) 

Cromwelly  Oliver.  Letters  and  Speeches.  By  Thomas 
Carlyle.  (London:  Chapman  and  Hall;  New 
York:  Charles  Scribner's  Sons,  1897.     4  vols.) 

Cromzvelly  Oliver,  Life  of.  By  John  Morley.  (Lon- 
don: Macmillan;  New~"Y5ik.  Ceifgury  Co., 
1902.) 

Cyropcedia.  By  Xenophon;  English  translation  by 
Walter  Miller.  (New  York:  Putnam's,  1914. 
Loeb  Classical  Library.) 

Darwin,  Charles,  Life  and  Letters  of.  Edited  by  his 
son,  Francis  Darwin.  (London:  Murray;  New 
York:  D.  Appleton,  1888.     2  vols.) 

David,  Story  of.     I  and  H  Samuel,  passim. 

Diderot.  By  John  Morley.  (London  and  New 
York:  Macmillan,  1891.     2  vols.) 

Frederick  the  Great,  Life  of.  By  Thomas  Carlyle. 
(London:  Chapman  and  Hall;  New  York: 
Charles  Scribner's  Sons,  1897-98.     8  vols.) 

The  French  Revolution.  By  Thomas  Carlyle.  (Lon- 
don: Chapman  and  Hall;  New  York:  Charles 
Scribner's  Sons,  1896.     3  vols.) 

Froissart.     Chronicles.     Translated    by    Bourchier; 
edited  in  i  vol.  by  G.  C.  Macaulay.     (London:   ,/ 
Macmillan,  1895.     Everyman's  Library.     Lon- 
don: Dent,  1906.) 

Gladstone,  William  Ewart,  Life  of.  By  John  Morley. 
(London  and  New  York:  Macmillan,  1903. 
3  vols.) 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

Goethe,  Life  of.  By  H.  Diintzer;  translated  by 
T.  W.  Lyster.  (London:  Unwin;  New  York: 
Macmillan,  1884.) 

Huxley,  Charles  Henry,  Life  and  Letters  of.  By  his 
son,  Leonard  Huxley.  (London  and  New 
York:  Macmillan.) 

Imitation  of  Christ.  By  Thomas  a  Kempis  ( ?) 
(Everyman's  Library.) 

Jefferiesy  R.  Story  of  My  Heart.  (London:  Long- 
mans, 1891.) 

Johnson,  Samuel.  Lives  of  the  English  Poets.  (Lon- 
don: Warne.     Chandos  Library.) 

Johnson,  BosweWs  Life  of.  By  T.  Carlyle.  In 
Critical  and  Miscellaneous  Essays,  vol.  IIL 
(London:  Chapman  and  Hall;  New  York: 
Charles  Scribner's  Sons.     1899.) 

Johnson,  BosweWs  Life  of.  Edited  by  G.  Birkbeck 
Hill.     (Oxford:  Clarendon  Press,  1887.     6  vols.) 

Joseph,  Story  of.     Genesis,  Chaps.  37-48. 

Kingsley,  Charles,  Letters  and  Memoirs  of.  By  Mrs. 
F.  E.  Kingsley.  (London:  1877.  Abridged  in 
I  vol.,  1901.) 

Lincoln,  Abraham.  By  Lord  Charnwood.  (Lon- 
don: Constable;  New  York:  Holt,  1918.) 

Lincoln,  Abraham.  A  History.  By  Nicolay  and 
Hay.    (New  York:  Century  Co.,  1890.    10  vols.) 

Louis  IX.  By  Jean,  Sire  de  Joinville.  Edition  De 
Wailly.  (Paris:  Didot,  1874.)  Also  in  Mem- 
oirs   of   the    Crusades.     Translated    by    Frank 


A  SHORT  LIST  OF   BOOKS 

Marzials.    (London:  Dent  [1908].    Everyman's 
Library.) 

Macaulay,  T.  B.  Complete  works.  (London:  Long- 
mans; Boston:  Houghton  Mifflin  Co.  Fireside 
Edition,  1910.     10  vols.) 

Macaulay y  Life  and  Letters  of  Lord.  By  his  nephew, 
George  Otto  Trevelyan.  (London:  Longmans, 
1876.     Also  New  York:  Harpers,  1909.) 

Maimoriy  Solomon.  Autobiography.  Translated  by 
J.  C.  Murray.  (Boston:  Cupples  &  Hurd, 
1888.) 

Marcus  Aurelius.  English  by  G.  H.  Rendall.  (Lon- 
don: Macmillan,  1901.) 

Metternich.  Un  Chancelier  d'Ancien  Regime.  By 
Charles  de  Mazade.     (Paris:  1886.) 

Mill,  John  Stuart.  Autobiography.  1873.  (Lon- 
don: Longmans;  New  York:  Henry  Holt,  1874.) 

More,  Life  of  Sir  Thomas.     By  W.  Roper.     (Lon-  / 
don:  1822.) 

Morley,  John.  Recollections.  (London  and  New 
York:  Macmillan,  1917.     2  vols.) 

Palmer^  Alice  Freeman,  Life  of.  By  G.  H.  Palmer. 
(Boston:  Houghton  Mifflin  Co.,  1908.) 

Pascal,  Blaise.  Pensees,  d'apres  I'ed.  de  Brun- 
schrigg.     (London:  Dent,  Collection  Gallia.) 

Pasteur,  Louis.  Life  of  Pasteur.  By  R.  Vallery- 
Radot.  (London:  Nutt-Berry;  New  York: 
Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.,  1902.     2  vols.) 

Pitt,  William,  Life  of.  By  Philip  Henry  Stanhope, 
fifth  Earl  Stanhope.     (London:  1879.     4  vols.) 


THE  ART  OF   BIOGRAPHY 

J  Plutarch's  Lives.     The  translation  called  Dryden*s, 

corrected  from  the  Greek  and  revised  by  A.  H. 

Clough.     (Liverpool:  Henry  Young,   1883.     3 

vols.) 
Rousseau.     By  John  Morley.     (London :  Macmillan, 

1915.     2  vols.) 
St.  Augustine.     Confessions.     Translated  by  E.  B. 

Pusey.     (London:    Chatto    &   Windus,    1909.) 

Also  translated  by  W.  Watts,  1631.     (London: 

Heinemann,  1912.     2  vols.) 
St.  Francis,  The  Little  Flowers  of.     [Fioretti.]   Trans- 
lated by  T.  W.  Arnold.     (London:  Dent,  1898. 

Temple  Classics.) 
St.  Francis.     Life  of  St.  Francis  of  Assisi.     By  Paul 

Sabatier.     (London:    Hodder    and    Stoughton; 

New  York:  Charles  Scribner's  Sons,  1894.) 
Schiller,   Friedrich,   Life   of.     By   Thomas   Carlyle. 

(London:    Chapman    and    Hall;    New    York: 

Charles  Scribner's  Sons,  1899.) 

Schiller,  Life  of.  By  H.  Diintzer;  English  transla- 
tion by  P.  E.  Pinkerton.  (London:  Macmillan, 
1883.) 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  Life  of.  By  J.  G.  Lockhart. 
(Edinburgh:  Cadell,  1839.     9  vols.) 

Socrates,  Memorabilia  of  the  Life  of.  By  Xenophon. 
(London:   Dent,   1913.     Everyman's  Library.) 

Sterling,  John,  Life  of.  By  Thomas  Carlyle.  (Lon- 
don: Chapman  and  Hall;  New  York:  Charles 
Scribner's  Sons,  1897.) 

154 


A  SHORT  LIST  OF  BOOKS 

Tennyson,  Alfred,  Lord.     A  Memoir.     By  his  son. 

(London    and    New   York:    Macmillan,    1897. 

2  vols.) 
Vasari,  Giorgio.     Lives  of  Seventy  Painters,  Sculptors, 

and  Architects.    Blashfield  edition.    (New  York: 

Charles  Scribner's  Sons,  1898.     4  vols.) 
Villehardouins  Chronicle  of  the  Fourth  Crusade.     In 

Memoirs  of  the  Crusades  ;  translated  by  Frank 

Marzials.     (London:  Dent,  [1908].    Everyman's 

Library.) 
Voltaire.     By  John  Morley.     (London:  Macmillan, 

1915-) 

Walpole,  Robert.  By  John  Morley.  (London :  Mac- 
millan, 1889.  Twelve  English  Statesmen 
Series.) 

JValton,    Izaak.     Lives    of  Donne,    Wotton,    Hooker,       I 
Herbert.     (London:  Dent,  1898.     Temple  Clas- 
sics.    2  vols.) 

Wolsey,  Life  of  Cardinal.  By  his  Gentleman  Usher, 
George  Cavendish.  (London:  Rivingtons, 
1852.) 


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